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ONE    MAN'S    INITIATION-^!? 


ONE  MAN'S 
INITIATION— 1917 


BY 

JOHN  DOS  PASSOS 


NEW  ^VSir   YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 

1922 


TS 


TO  THOSE 

WITH  WHOM  I  SAW  ROCKETS  IN  THE  SKY  A 
CERTAIN  EVENING  AT  SUNSET  ON  THE  ROAD 
FROM  ERIZE-LA-PETITE  TO  ERIZE- LA- GRANDE. 


717175 


One  Man's  Initiation— 1 917 


CHAPTER  I 

IN  the  huge  shed  of  the  wharf,  piled  with 
crates  and  baggage,  broken  by  gang 
planks  leading  up  to  ships  on  either  side, 
a  band  plays  a  tinselly  Hawaiian  tune ; 
people  are  dancing  in  and  out  among  the  piles 
of  trunks  and  boxes.  There  is  a  scattering  of 
khaki  uniforms,  and  many  young  men  stand 
in  groups  laughing  and  talking  in  voices 
pitched  shrill  with  excitement.  In  the  brown 
light  of  the  wharf,  full  of  rows  of  yellow 
crates  and  barrels  and  sacks,  full  of  racket  of 
cranes,  among  which  winds  in  and  out  the 
trivial  lilt  of  the  Hawaiian  tune,  there  is  a 
flutter  of  gay  dresses  and  coloured  hats  of 
women,  and  white  handkerchiefs. 

The  booming  reverberation  of  the  ship's 
whistle  drowns  all  other  sound. 

After  it  the  noise  of  farewells  rises  shrill. 
White  handkerchiefs  are  agitated  in  the  brown 
light  of  the  shed.  Ropes  crack  in  pulleys  as 
the  gang-planks  are  raised. 

Again,  at  the  pierhead,  white  handkerchiefs 
and  cheering  and  a  flutter  of  coloured  dresses. 
On  the  wharf  building  a  flag  spreads  exultingly 
against  the  azure  afternoon  sky. 

Rosy  yellow  and  drab  purple,  the  buildings 
of  New  York  slide  together  into  a  pyramid 
above  brown  smudges  of  smoke  standing  out 


io     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

in  the  water,  linked  to  the  land  by  the  dark 
curves  of  the  bridges. 

In  the  fresh  harbour  wind  comes  now  and 
then  a  salt-wafting  breath  off  the  sea. 

Martin  Howe  stands  in  the  stern  that 
trembles  with  the  vibrating  push  of  the 
screw.  A  boy  standing  beside  him  turns  and 
asks  in  a  tremulous  voice,  "  This  your  first 
time  across  ?  " 

"  Yes.  .  .  .  Yours  ?  " 

"  Yes.  ...  I  never  used  to  think  that  at 
nineteen  I'd  be  crossing  the  Atlantic  to  go  to 
a  war  in  France/'  The  boy  caught  himself  up 
suddenly  and  blushed.  Then  swallowing  a 
lump  in  his  throat  he  said,  "  It  ought  to  be 
time  to  eat." 

"  God  help  Kaiser  Bill  / 
O-o-o  old  Uncle  Sam. 
He's  got  the  cavalry, 
He's  got  the  infantry, 
He's  got  the  artillery  ; 
And  then  by  God  we  II  all  go  to  Germany  ! 
God  help  Kaiser  Bill !  " 

The  iron  covers  are  clamped  on  the  smoking- 
room  windows,  for  no  lights  must  show.  So 
the  air  is  dense  with  tobacco  smoke  and  the 
reek  of  beer  and  champagne.  In  one  corner 
they  are  playing  poker  with  their  coats  off. 
All  the  chairs  are  full  of  sprawling  young  men 
who  stamp  their  feet  to  the  time,  and  bang 
their  fists  down  so  that  the  bottles  dance  on 
the  tables. 

"God  help  Kaiser  Bill." 
Sky   and   sea   are   opal   grey.     Martin   is 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     n 

stretched  on  the  deck  in  the  bow  of  the  boat 
with  an  unopened  book  beside  him.  He  has 
never  been  so  happy  in  his  life.  The  future  is 
nothing  to  him,  the  past  is  nothing  to  him. 
All  his  life  is  effaced  in  the  grey  languor  of 
the  sea,  in  the  soft  surge  of  the  water  about  the 
ship's  bow  as  she  ploughs  through  the  long 
swell,  eastward.  The  tepid  moisture  of  the 
Gulf  Stream  makes  his  clothes  feel  damp  and 
his  hair  stick  together  into  curls  that  straggle 
over  his  forehead.  There  are  porpoises  about, 
lazily  tumbling  in  the  swell,  and  flying-fish 
skim  from  one  grey  wave  to  another,  and  the 
bow  rises  and  falls  gently  in  rhythm  with  the 
surging  sing-song  of  the  broken  water. 

Martin  has  been  asleep.  As  through  in 
finite  mists  of  greyness  he  looks  back  on  the 
sharp  hatreds  and  wringing  desires  of  his  life. 
Now  a  leaf  seems  to  have  been  turned  and  a 
new  white  page  spread  before  him,  clean  and 
unwritten  on.  At  last  things  have  come  to 
pass. 

And  very  faintly,  like  music  heard  across 
the  water  in  the  evening,  blurred  into  strange 
harmonies,  his_old  watchwords  echo  a  little 
in  his  mind.  Like  the  red  flame  of  the 
sunset  setting  fire  to  opal  sea  and  sky,  the  old 
exaltation,  the  old  flame  that  would  consume 
to  ashes  all  the  lies  in  the  world,  the  trumpet- 
blast  under  which  the  walls  of  Jericho  would 
fall  down,  stirs  and  broods  in  the  womb  of 
his  grey  lassitude.  The  bow  rises  and  falls 
gently  in  rhythm  with  the  surging  sing-song 
of  the  broken  water,  as  the  steamer  ploughs 
through  the  long  swell  of  the  Gulf  Stream, 
eastward. 


12     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

"  See  that  guy,  the  feller  with  the  straw 
hat ;  he  lost  five  hundred  dollars  at  craps  last 
night." 

"  Some  stakes." 

It  is  almost  dark.  Sea  and  sky  are  glowing 
claret  colour,  darkened  to  a  cold  bluish-green 
to  westward.  In  a  corner  of  the  deck  a 
number  of  men  are  crowded  in  a  circle, 
while  one  shakes  the  dice  in  his  hand  with 
a  strange  nervous  quiver  that  ends  in  a 
snap  of  the  fingers  as  the  white  dice  roll  on 
the  deck. 

"  Seven  up." 

From  the  smoking-room  comes  a  sound  of 
singing  and  glasses  banged  on  tables. 

"  Oh,  we're  bound  for  the  Hamburg  show, 
To  see  the  elephant  and  the  wild  kangaroo, 
An'  we'll  all  stick  together 
In  fair  or  foul  weather, 
For  we're  going  to  see  the  damn  show  through  !  " 

On  the  settee  a  sallow  young  man  is  shaking 
the  ice  in  a  whisky-and-soda  into  a  nervous 
tinkle  as  he  talks  : 

'  There's  nothing  they  can  do  against  this 
new  gas.  ...  It  just  corrodes  the  lungs  as  if 
they  were  rotten  in  a  dead  body.  In  the 
hospitals  they  just  stand  the  poor  devils  up 
against  a  wall  and  let  them  die.  They  say 
their  skin  turns  green  and  that  it  takes  from 
five  to  seven  days  to  die — five  to  seven  days  of 
slow  choking." 

"  Oh,  but  I  think  it's  so  splendid  of  you  " — 
she  bared  all  her  teeth,  white  and  regular  as 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917     13 

those  in  a  dentist's  show-case,  in  a  smile  as 
she  spoke — "  to  come  over  this  way  to  help 
France." 

"  Perhaps  it's  only  curiosity,"  muttered 
Martin. 

"  Oh  no.  .  .  .  You're  too  modest.  .  .  . 
What  I  mean  is  that  it's  so  splendid  to  have 
understood  the  issues.  .  .  .  That's  how  I  feel. 
I  just  told  dad  I'd  have  to  come  and  do  my 
bit,  as  the  English  say." 

'  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?  " 

"  Something  in  Paris.  I  don't  know  just 
what,  but  I'll  certainly  make  myself  useful 
somehow."  She  beamed  at  him  provoca 
tively.  "  Oh,  if  only  I  was  a  man,  I'd  have 
shouldered  my  gun  the  first  day ;  indeed  I 
would." 

"  But  the  issues  were  hardly  .  .  .  defined 
then,"  ventured  Martin. 

"  They  didn't  need  to  be.  I  hate  those 
brutes.  I've  always  hated  the  Germans, 
their  language,  their  country,  everything 
about  them.  And  now  that  they've  done  such 
frightful  things  .  .  ." 

'  I  wonder  if  it's  all  true  .  .  ." 

"  True  !  Oh,  of  course  it's  all  true  ;  and 
lots  more  that  it  hasn't  been  possible  to 
print,  that  people  have  been  ashamed  to 
tell." 

'They've  gone  pretty  far,"  said  Martin, 
laughing. 

"  If  there  are  any  left  alive  after  the  war 
they  ought  to  be  chloroformed.  .  .  .  And 
really  I  don't  think  it's  patriotic  or  humane  to 
take  the  atrocities  so  lightly.  .  .  .  But  really, 
you  must  excuse  me  if  you  think  me  rude  ;  I 


14     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

do  get  so  excited  and  wrought  up  when  I 
think  of  those  frightful  things.  ...  I  get 
quite  beside  myself ;  I'm  sure  you  do  too,  in 
your  heart.  .  .  .  Any  red-blooded  person 
would." 

"  Only  I  doubt  .  .  ." 

"  But  you're  just  playing  into  their  hands 
if  you  do  that.  .  .  .  Oh,  dear,  I'm  quite 
beside  myself,  just  thinking  of  it."  She 
raised  a  small  gloved  hand  to  her  pink  cheek 
in  a  gesture  of  horror,  and  settled  herself 
comfortably  in  her  deck  chair.  "  Really,  I 
oughtn't  to  talk  about  it.  I  lose  all  self- 
control  when  I  do.  I  hate  them  so  it  makes 
me  quite  ill.  .  .  .  The  curs  !  The  Huns  ! 
Let  me  tell  you  just  one  story.  ...  I  know 
it'll  make  your  blood  boil.  It's  absolutely 
authentic,  too.  I  heard  it  before  I  left  New 
York  from  a  girl  who's  really  the  best  friend 
I  have  on  earth.  She  got  it  from  a  friend  of 
hers  who  had  got  it  directly  from  a  little 
Belgian  girl,  poor  little  thing,  who  was  in  the 
convent  at  the  time.  .  .  .  Oh,  I  don't  see 
why  they  ever  take  any  prisoners ;  I'd  kill 
them  all  like  mad  dogs." 

'  What's  the  story  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  can't  tell  it.  It  upsets  me  too 
much.  .  .  .  No,  that's  silly,  I've  got  to  begin 
facing  realities.  ...  It  was  just  when  the 
Germans  were  taking  Bruges,  the  Uhlans 
broke  into  this  convent.  .  .  .  But  I  think  it 
was  in  Lou  vain,  not  Bruges.  ...  I  have  a 
wretched  memory  for  names.  .  .  .  Well,  they 
broke  in,  and  took  all  those  poor  defenceless 
little  girls  .  .V* 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    15 

"  There's  the  dinner-bell." 

"  Oh,  so  it  is.  I  must  run  and  dress.  I'll 
have  to  tell  you  later.  .  .  ." 

Through  half-closed  eyes,  Martin  watched 
the  fluttering  dress  and  the  backs  of  the 
neat  little  white  shoes  go  jauntily  down  the 
deck. 

The  smoking-room  again.  Clink  of  glasses 
and  chatter  of  confident  voices.  Two  men 
talking  over  their  glasses. 

"  They  tell  me  that  Paris  is  some 
city." 

'  The  most  immoral  place  in  the  world, 
before  the  war.  Why,  there  are  houses 
there  where  .  .  ."  his  voice  sank  into  a 
whisper.  The  other  man  burst  into  loud 
guffaws. 

"  But  the  war's  put  an  end  to  all  that. 
They  tell  me  that  French  people  are  re 
generated,  positively  regenerated." 

"  They  say  the  lack  of  food's  something 
awful,  that  you  can't  get  a  square  meal. 
They  even  eat  horse." 

"  Did  you  hear  what  those  fellows  were 
saying  about  that  new  gas  ?  Sounds  fright 
ful,  don't  it  ?  I  don't  care  a  thing  about 
bullets,  but  that  kind  o'  gives  me  cold  feet. 
...  I  don't  give  a  damn  about  bullets,  but 
that  gas  .  .  ." 

"  That's  why  so  many  shoot  their  friends 
when  they're  gassed.  .  ^  ." 

"  Say,  you  two,  ho~w  about  a  hand  of 
poker  ?  "  ' 

A  champagne  cork  pops. 


16     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  Jiminy,  don't  spill  it  all  over  me." 
"  Where  we  goin',  boys  ?  " 

"  Oh,  we're  going  to  the  Hamburg  show 
To  see  the  elephant  and  the  wild  kangaroo, 
And  we'll  all  stick  together 
In  fair  or  foul  weather, 
For  we're  going  to  see  the  damn  show  through  !  " 


CHAPTER  II 

BEFORE  going  to  bed  Martin  had  seen 
the  lighthouses  winking  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Gironde,  and  had  filled  his 
lungs  with  the  new,  indefinably  scented  wind 
coming  off  the  land.  The  sound  of  screaming 
whistles  of  tug-boats  awoke  him.  Feet  were 
tramping  on  the  deck  above  his  head.  The 
shrill  whine  of  a  crane  sounded  in  his  ears  and 
the  throaty  cry  of  men  lifting  something  in 
unison. 

Through  his  port-hole  in  the  yet  colourless 
dawn  he  saw  the  reddish  water  of  a  river  with 
black-hulled  sailing-boats  on  it  and  a  few 
lanky  little  steamers  of  a  pattern  he  had 
never  seen  before.  Again  he  breathed  deep 
of  the  new  indefinable  smell  off  the  land. 

Once  on  deck  in  the  cold  air,  he  saw 
through  the  faint  light  a  row  of  houses  beyond 
the  low  wharf  buildings,  grey  mellow  houses  of 
four  storeys  with  tiled  roofs  and  intricate 
ironwork  balconies,  with  balconies  in  which 
the  ironwork  had  been  carefully  twisted  by 
artisans  long  ago  dead  into  gracefully  modu 
lated  curves  and  spirals. 

Some  in  uniform,  some  not,  the  ambulance 
men  marched  to  the  station,  through  the  grey 
streets  of  Bordeaux.  Once  a  woman  opened 
a  window  and  crying,  "  Vive  TAmerique," 
threw  out  a  bunch  of  roses  and  daisies.  As 
they  were  rounding  a  corner,  a  man  with  a 

B 


i8     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

frockcoat  on  ran  up  and  put  his  own  hat  on 
the  head  of  one  of  the  Americans  who  had 
none.  In  front  of  the  station,  waiting  for  the 
train,  they  sat  at  the  little  tables  of  cafes, 
lolling  comfortably  in  the  early  morning 
sunlight,  and  drank  beer  and  cognac. 

Small  railway  carriages  into  which  they 
were  crowded  so  that  their  knees  were  pressed 
tight  together — and  outside,  slipping  by,  blue- 
green  fields,  and  poplars  stalking  out  of  the 
morning  mist,  and  long  drifts  of  poppies. 
Scarlet  poppies,  and  cornflowers,  and  white 
daisies,  and  the  red-tiled  roofs  and  white 
walls  of  cottages,  all  against  a  background  of 
glaucous  green  fields  and  hedges.  Tours, 
Poitiers,  Orleans.  In  the  names  of  the 
stations  rose  old  wars,  until  the  floods  of 
scarlet  poppies  seemed  the  blood  of  fighting 
men  slaughtered  through  all  time.  At  last, 
in  the  gloaming,  Paris,  and,  in  crossing  a 
bridge  over  the  Seine,  a  glimpse  of  the  two 
linked  towers  of  Notre-Dame,  rosy  grey  in  the 
grey  mist  up  the  river. 

"  Say,  these  women  here  get  my  goat." 

"  How  do  you  mean  ?  " 

'  Well,  I  was  at  the  Olympia  with  Johnson 
and  that  crowd.  They  just  pester  the  life 
put  of  you  there.  I'd  heard  that  Paris  was 
immoral,  but  nothing  like  this." 

"  It's  the  war." 

'  But  the  Jane  I  went  with  .  .  ." 

"  Gee,  these  Frenchwomen  are  immoral. 
They  say  the  war  does  it." 

"  Can't  be  that.  Nothing  is  more  purify 
ing  than  sacrifice." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    19 

"  A  feller  has  to  be  mighty  careful,  they 
say." 

"  Looks  like  every  woman  you  saw  walking 
on  the  street  was  a  whore.  They  certainly 
are  good-lookers  though." 

"  King  and  his  gang  are  all  being  sent  back 
to  the  States." 

"I'll  be  darned  !  They  sure  have  been 
drunk  ever  since  they  got  off  the  steamer." 

'  Raised  hell  in  Maxim's  last  night.  They 
tried  to  clean  up  the  place  and  the  police 
came.  They  were  all  soused  to  the  gills  and 
tried  to  make  everybody  there  sing  the  '  Star 
Spangled  Banner/ ' 

"  Damn  fool  business." 

Martin  Howe  sat  at  a  table  on  the  sidewalk 
under  the  brown  awning  of  a  restaurant. 
Opposite  in  the  last  topaz-clear  rays  of  the 
sun,  the  foliage  of  the  Jardin  du  Luxembourg 
shone  bright  green  above  deep  alleys  of 
bluish  shadow.  From  the  pavements  in  front 
of  the  mauve-coloured  houses  rose  little 
kiosks  with  advertisements  in  bright  orange 
and  vermilion  and  blue.  In  the  middle  of 
the  triangle  formed  by  the  streets  and  the 
garden  was  a  round  pool  of  jade  water. 
Martin  leaned  back  in  his  chair  looking 
dreamily  out  through  half-closed  eyes,  breath 
ing  deep  now  and  then  of  the  musty  scent  of 
Paris,  that  mingled  with  the  melting  freshness 
of  the  wild  strawberries  on  the  plate  before 
him. 

As  he  stared  in  front  of  him  two  figures 
crossed  his  field  of  vision.  A  woman  swathed 
in  black  crepe  veils  was  helping  a  soldier  to  a 


20    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

seat  at  the  next  table.  He  found  himself 
staring  in  a  face,  a  face  that  still  had  some  of 
the  chubbiness  of  boyhood.  Between  the  pale- 
brown  frightened  eyes,  where  the  nose  should 
have  been,  was  a  triangular  black  patch  that 
ended  in  some  mechanical  contrivance  with 
shiny  little  black  metal  rods  that  took  the 
place  of  the  jaw.  He  could  not  take  his  eyes 
from  the  soldier's  eyes,  that  were  like  those  of 
a  hurt  animal,  full  of  meek  dismay.  Someone 
plucked  at  Martin's  arm,  and  he  turned 
suddenly,  fearfully. 

A  bent  old  woman  was  offering  him  flowers 
with  a  jerky  curtsey. 

"  Just  a  rose,  for  good  luck  ?  ' 
'  No,  thank  you." 

"  It  will  bring  you  happiness." 

He  took  a  couple  of  the  reddest  of  the 
roses. 

"  Do  you  understand  the  language  of 
flowers  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  I  shall  teach  you.  .  .  .  Thank  you  so 
much.  .  .  .  Thank  you  so  much." 

She  added  a  few  large  daisies  to  the  red 
roses  in  his  hand 

"  These  will  bring  you  love.  .  .  .  But 
another  time  I  shall  teach  you  the  language 
of  flowers,  the  language  of  love." 

She  curtseyed  again,  and  began  making  her 
way  jerkily  down  the  sidewalk,  jingling  his 
silver  in  her  hand. 

He  stuck  the  roses  and  daisies  in  the  belt  of 
his  uniform  and  sat  with  the  green  flame  of 
Chartreuse  in  a  little  glass  before  him,  staring 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    21 

into  the  gardens,  where  the  foliage  was  becom 
ing  blue  and  lavender  with  evening,  and  the 
shadows  darkened  to  grey-purple  and  black. 
Now  and  then  he  glanced  furtively,  with 
shame,  at  the  man  at  the  next  table.  When 
the  restaurant  closed  he  wandered  through 
the  unlighted  streets  towards  the  river, 
listening  to  the  laughs  and  conversations  that 
bubbled  like  the  sparkle  in  Burgundy  through 
the  purple  summer  night. 

But  wherever  he  looked  in  the  comradely 
faces  of  young  men,  in  the  beckoning  eyes  of 
women,  he  saw  the  brown  hurt  eyes  of  the 
soldier,  and  the  triangular  black  patch  where 
the  nose  should  have  been. 


CHAPTER  III 

AT  Epernay  the  station  was  wrecked; 
the  corrugated  tin  of  the  roof  hung 
in  strips  over  the  crumbled  brick 
walls. 

"  They  say  the  Boches  came  over  last  night. 
They  killed  a  lot  of  permissionaires." 

'  That  river's  the  Marne." 

"  Gosh,  is  it  ?     Let  me  get  to  the  winder." 

The  third-class  car,  joggling  along  on  a 
flat  wheel,  was  full  of  the  smell  of  sweat  and 
sour  wine.  Outside,  yellow-green  and  blue- 
green,  crossed  by  long  processions  of  poplars, 
aflame  with  vermilion  and  carmine  of  poppies, 
the  countryside  slipped  by.  At  a  station 
where  the  train  stopped  on  a  siding,  they 
could  hear  a  faint  hollow  sound  in  the  dis 
tance  :  guns. 

Croix  de  Guerre  had  been  given  out  that 
day  at  the  automobile  park  at  Chalons. 
There  was  an  unusually  big  dinner  at  the 
wooden  tables  in  the  narrow  portable  bar 
racks,  and  during  the  last  course  the  General 
passed  through  and  drank  a  glass  of  cham 
pagne  to  the  health  of  all  present.  Every 
body  had  on  his  best  uniform  and  sweated 
hugely  in  the  narrow,  airless  building,  from 
the  wine  and  the  champagne  and  the  thick 
stew,  thickly  seasoned,  that  made  the  dinner's 
main  course. 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917     23 

"  We  are  all  one  large  family,"  said  the 
General  from  the  end  of  the  barracks  .  .  . 
"  to  France." 

That  night  the  wail  of  a  siren  woke  Martin 
suddenly  and  made  him  sit  up  in  his  bunk 
trembling,  wondering  where  he  was.  Like 
the  shriek  of  a  woman  in  a  nightmare,  the 
wail  of  the  siren  rose  and  rose  and  then 
dropped  in  pitch  and  faded  throbbingly  out. 

"  Don't  flash  a  light  there.  It's  Boche 
planes." 

Outside  the  night  was  cold,  with  a  little 
light  from  a  waned  moon. 

"  See  the  shrapnel !  "  someone  cried. 

'  The  Boche  has  a  Mercedes  motor,"  said 
someone  else.  "  You  can  tell  by  the  sound 
of  it." 

"  They  say  one  of  their  planes  chased  an 
ambulance  ten  miles  along  a  straight  road  the 
other  day,  trying  to  get  it  with  a  machine- 
gun.  The  man  who  was  driving  got  away,  but 
he  had  shell-shock  afterwards." 

"  Did  he  really  ?  " . 

"  Oh,  I'm  goin'  to  turn  in.  God,  these 
French  nights  are  cold  !  " 

The  rain  pattered  hard  with  unfaltering 
determination  on  the  roof  of  the  little  arbour. 
Martin  lolled  over  the  rough  board  table, 
resting  his  chin  on  his  clasped  hands,  looking 
through  the  tinkling  bead  curtains  of  the  rain 
towards  the  other  end  of  the  weed-grown 
garden,  where,  under  a  canvas  shelter,  the 
cooks  were  moving  about  in  front  of  two  black 
steaming  cauldrons.  Through  the  fresh  scent 
of  rain-beaten  leaves  came  a  greasy  smell  of 


24     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

soup.  He  was  thinking  of  the  jolly  wedding- 
parties  that  must  have  drunk  and  danced  in 
this  garden  before  the  war,  of  the  lovers  who 
must  have  sat  in  that  very  arbour,  pressing 
sunburned  cheek  against  sunburned  cheek, 
twining  hands  callous  with  work  in  the 
fields.  A  man  broke  suddenly  into  the 
arbour  behind  Martin  and  stood  flicking  the 
water  off  his  uniform  with  his  cap.  His 
sand-coloured  hair  was  wet  and  was  plastered 
in  little  spikes  to  his  broad  forehead,  a 
forehead  that  was  the  entablature  of  a 
determined  rock-hewn  face. 

"  Hello,"  said  Martin,  twisting  his  head  to 
look  at  the  newcomer.  "  You  section  twenty- 
four  ?  " 

"  Yes.  .  .  .  Ever  read  '  Alice  in  Wonder 
land'?"  asked  the  wet  man,  sitting  down 
abruptly  at  the  table.  „ 

'  Yes,  indeed." 

"  Doesn't  this  remind  you  of  it  ?  " 

"  What  ?  " 

"  This  war  business.  Why,  I  keep  thinking 
I'm  going  to  meet  the  rabbit  who  put  butter 
in  his  watch  round  every  corner." 

"It  was  the  best  butter." 

'  That's  the  hell  of  it." 

'  When's  your  section  leaving  here  ?  " 
asked  Martin,  picking  up  the  conversation 
after  a  pause  during  which  they'd  both  stared 
out  into  the  rain.  They  could  hear  almost 
constantly  the  grinding  roar  of  camions  on  the 
road  behind  the  cafe  and  the  slither  of  their 
wheels  through  the  mud-puddles  where  the 
road  turned  into  the  Milage. 

"  How  the  devil  should  I  know  ?  " 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    25 

"  Somebody  had  dope  this  morning  that 
we'd  leave  here  for  Soissons  to-morrow/' 
Martin's  words  tailed  off  into  a  convictionless 
mumble. 

"  It  surely  is  different  than  you'd  pictured 
it,  isn't  it,  now  ?  " 

They  sat  looking  at  each  other  while  the 
big  drops  from  the  leaky  roof  smacked  on  the 
table  or  splashed  cold  in  their  faces. 

'  What  do  you  think  of  all  this,  anyway  ?  " 
said  the  wet  man  suddenly,  lowering  his  voice 
stealthily. 

'  I  don't  know.  I  never  did  expect  it  to  be 
what  we  were  taught  to  believe.  .  .  .  Things 
aren't." 

"  But  you  can't  have  guessed  that  it  was 
like  this  .  .  .  like  Alice  in  Wonderland,  like 
an  ill-intentioned  Drury  Lane  pantomime, 
like  all  the  dusty  futility  of  Barnum  and 
Bailey's  Circus." 

"  No,  I  thought  it  would  be  hair-raising," 
said  Martin. 

"  Think,  man,  think  of  all  the  oceans  of  lies 
through  all  the  ages  that  must  have  been 
necessary  to  make  this  possible  !  Think  of 
this  new  particular  vintage  of  lies  that  has 
been  so  industriously  pumped  out  of  the  press 
and  the  pulpit.  Doesn't  it  stagger  you  ?  " 

Martin  nodded. 

"  Why,  lies  are  like  a  sticky  juice  over 
spreading  the  world,  a  living,  growing  flypaper 
to  catch  and  gum  the  wings  of  every  human 
soul.  .  .  .  And  the  little  helpless  buzzings  of 
honest,  liberal,  kindly  people,  aren't  they  like 
the  thin  little  noise  flies  make  when  they're 
caught  ?  " 


26     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

"  I  agree  with  you  that  the  little  thin  noise 
is  very  silly,"  said  Martin. 

Martin  slammed  down  the  hood  of  the  car 
and  stood  upright.  A  cold  stream  of  rain  ran 
down  the  sleeves  of  his  slicker  and  dripped 
from  his  greasy  hands. 

Infantry  tramped  by,  the  rain  spattering 
with  a  cold  glitter  on  grey  helmets,  on  gun- 
barrels,  on  the  straps  of  equipment.  Red 
sweating  faces,  drooping  under  the  hard 
rims  of  helmets,  turned  to  the  ground  with 
the  struggle  with  the  weight  of  equipment ; 
rows  and  patches  of  faces  were  the  only 
warmth  in  the  desolation  of  putty-coloured 
mud  and  bowed  mud-coloured  bodies  and 
dripping  mud-coloured  sky.  In  the  cold 
colourlessness  they  were  delicate  and  feeble  as 
the  faces  of  children,  rosy  and  soft  under  the 
splattering  of  mud  and  the  shagginess  of 
unshaven  beards. 

Martin  rubbed  the  back  of  his  hand  against 
his  face.  His  skin  was  like  that,  too,  soft  as 
the  petals  of  flowers,  soft  and  warm  amid  all 
this  dead  mud,  amid  all  this  hard  mud- 
covered  steel. 

He  leant  against  the  side  of  the  car,  his  ears 
full  of  the  heavy  shuffle,  of  the  jingle  of 
equipment,  of  the  splashing  in  puddles  of 
water-soaked  boots,  and  watched  the  endless 
rosy  patches  of  faces  moving  by,  the  faces 
that  drooped  towards  the  dripping  boots  that 
rose  and  fell,  churning  into  froth  the  soupy, 
putty-coloured  mud  of  the  road. 

The  schoolmaster's  garden  was  full  of  late 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    27 

roses  and  marigolds,  all  parched  and 
bleached  by  the  thick  layer  of  dust  that  was 
over  them.  Next  to  the  vine-covered  trellis 
that  cut  the  garden  off  from  the  road  stood  a 
green  table  and  a  few  cane  chairs.  The  school 
master,  something  charmingly  eighteenth- 
century  about  the  cut  of  his  breeches 
and  the  calves  of  his  legs  in  their  thick 
woollen  golf-stockings,  led  the  way,  a  brown 
pitcher  of  wine  in  his  hand.  Martin  Howe 
and  the  black-haired,  brown-faced  boy  from 
New  Orleans  who  was  his  car-mate  followed 
him.  Then  came  a  little  grey  woman  in  a  pink 
knitted  shawl,  carrying  a  tray  with  glasses. 

'  In  the  Verdunois  our  wine  is  not  very 
good,"  said  the  schoolmaster,  bowing  them 
into  chairs.  "It  is  thin  and  cold  like  the 
climate.  To  your  health,  gentlemen." 

'  To  France." 

'  To  America." 

"  And  down  with  the  Bodies." 

In  the  pale  yellow  light  that  came  from 
among  the  dark  clouds  that  passed  over  the 
sky,  the  wine  had  the  chilly  gleam  of  yellow 
diamonds. 

"  Ah,  you  should  have  seen  that  road  in 
1916,"  said  the  schoolmaster,  drawing  a  hand 
over  his  watery  blue  eyes.  '  That,  you 
know,  is  the  Voie  Sacree,  the  sacred  way  that 
saved  Verdun.  All  day,  all  day,  a  double 
line  of  camions  went  up,  full  of  ammunition 
and  ravitaillement  and  men." 

"  Oh,  the  poor  boys,  we  saw  so  many  go 
up,"  came  the  voice,  dry  as  the  rustling  of  the 
wind  in  the  vine-leaves,  of  the  grey  old  woman 
who  stood  leaning  against  the  schoolmaster's 


28     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

chair,  looking  out  through  a  gap  in  the  trellis 
at  the  rutted  road  so  thick  with  dust,  "  and 
never  have  we  seen  one  of  them  come  back." 

"  It  was  for  France." 

"  But  this  was  a  nice  village  before  the  war. 
From  Verdun  to  Bar-le-Duc,  the  Courrier  des 
Postes  used  to  tell  us,  there  was  no  such 
village,  so  clean  and  with  such  fine  orchards." 
The  old  woman  leaned  over  the  schoolmaster's 
shoulder,  joining  eagerly  in  the  conversation. 

"  Even  now  the  fruit  is  very  fine,"  said 
Martin. 

"  But  you  soldiers,  you  steal  it  all,"  said  the 
old  woman,  throwing  out  her  arms.  "  You 
leave  us  nothing,  nothing." 

"  We  don't  begrudge  it,"  said  the  school 
master,  "  all  we  have  is  our  country's." 

"  We  shall  starve  then.  .  .  ." 

As  she  spoke  the  glasses  on  the  table  shook. 
With  a  roar  of  heavy  wheels  and  a  grind  of 
gears  a  camion  went  by. 

"  O  good  God  !  "  The  old  woman  looked 
out  on  to  the  road  with  terror  in  her  face, 
blinking  her  eyes  in  the  thick  dust. 

Roaring  with  heavy  wheels,  grinding  with 
gears,  throbbing  with  motors,  camion  after 
camion  went  by,  slowly,  stridently.  The  men 
packed  into  the  camions  had  broken  through 
the  canvas  covers  and  leaned  out,  waving 
their  arms  and  shouting. 

"  Oh,  the  poor  children,"  said  the  old 
woman,  wringing  her  hands,  her  voice  lost  in 
the  roar  and  the  shouting. 

'  They  should  not  destroy  property  that 
way,"  said  the  schoolmaster.  .  .  .  "Last  year 
it  was  dreadful.  There  were  mutinies." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    29 

Martin  sat,  his  chair  tilted  back,  his  hands 
trembling,  staring  with  compressed  lips  at  the 
men  who  jolted  by  on  the  strident,  throbbing 
camions.  A  word  formed  in  his  mind : 
tumbrils. 

In  some  trucks  the  men  were  drunk  and 
singing,  waving  their  bidons  in  the  air, 
shouting  at  people  along  the  road,  crying  out 
all  sorts  of  things  :  "  Get  to  the  front !  " 
"  Into  the  trenches  with  them  !  "  "  Down 
with  the  war  !  "  In  others  they  sat  quiet, 
faces  corpse-like  with  dust.  Through  the  gap 
in  the  trellis  Martin  stared  at  them,  noting 
intelligent  faces,  beautiful  faces,  faces  brutally 
gay,  miserable  faces  like  those  of  sobbing 
drunkards. 

At  last  the  convoy  passed  and  the  dust 
settled  again  on  the  rutted  poad. 

"  Oh,  the  poor  children  !  "  said  the  old 
woman.  "  They  know  they  are  going  to 
death." 

They  tried  to  hide  their  agitation.  The 
schoolmaster  poured  out  more  wine. 

"  Yes,"  said  Martin,  "  there  are  fine  or 
chards  on  the  hills  round  here." 

"  You  should  be  here  when  the  plums  are 
ripe,"  said  .the  schoolmaster. 

A  tall  bearded  man,  covered  with  dust  to 
the  eyelashes,  in  the  uniform  of  a  commandant, 
stepped  into  the  garden. 

"  My  dear  friends  !  "  He  shook  hands  with 
the  schoolmaster  and  the  old  woman  and 
saluted  the  two  Americans.  "  I  could  not 
pass  without  stopping  a  moment.  We  are 
going  up  to  an  attack.  We  have  the  honour 
to  take  the  lead." 


3o     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 
"  You  will  have  a  glass  of  wine,  won't 

you  ? " 

'  With  great  pleasure." 

"  Julie,  fetch  a  bottle,  you  know  which. 
.  .  .  How  is  the  morale  ?  " 

"  Perfect." 

"  I  thought  they  looked  a  little  dis 
contented." 

"No.  .  .  .  It 'sal  ways  like  that.  .  .  .  They 
were  yelling  at  some  gendarmes.  If  they 
strung  up  a  couple  it  would  serve  them 
right,  dirty  beasts." 

'  You   soldiers   are    all   one   against   the 
gendarmes." 

"  Yes.  We  fight  the  enemy  but  we  hate 
the  gendarmes."  The  commandant  rubbed 
his  hands,  drank  his  wine  and  laughed. 

"  Hah  !    There's  the  next  convoy.    I  must 

go/' 

"  Good  luck." 

The  commandant  shrugged  his  shoulders, 
clicked  his  heels  together  at  the  garden  gate, 
saluted,  smiling,  and  was  gone. 

Again  the  village  street  was  full  of  the 
grinding  roar  and  throb  of  camions,  full  of  a 
frenzy  of  wheels  and  drunken  shouting. 

"  Give  us  a  drink,  you." 

'  We're  the  train  de  luxe,  we  are." 

"  Down  with  the  war.!  " 

And  the  old  grey  woman  wrung  her  hands 
and  said : 

"  Oh,  the  poor  children,  they  know  they 
are  going  to  death  !  " 


CHAPTER  IV 

MARTIN,  rolled  up  in  his  bedroll  on 
the  floor  of  the  empty  hayloft, 
woke  with  a  start. 

"  Say,  Howe  !  "  Tom  Randolph,  who  lay 
next  him,  was  pressing  his  hand.  "  I  think  I 
heard  a  shell  go  over." 

As  he  spoke  there  came  a  shrill,  loudening 
whine,  and  an  explosion  that  shook  the  barn. 
A  little  dirt  fell  down  on  Martin's  face. 

"  Say,  fellers,  that  was  damn  near,"  came  a 
voice  from  the  floor  of  the  barn. 

'  We'd  better  go  over  to  the  quarry." 
"  Oh,  hell,  I  was  sound  asleep  !  " 
A  vicious  shriek  overhead  and  a  shaking 
snort  of  explosion. 

"  Gee,    that    was    in    the    house    behind 
us.  .  .  ." 
'"  I  'smell  gas." 

'  Ye  damn  fool,  it's  carbide." 
"  One  of  the  Frenchmen  said  it  was  gas." 
"  All  right,  fellers,  put  on  your  masks." 
Outside  there  was  a  sickly  rough  smell  in 
the   air   that   mingled    strangely    with   the 
perfume  of  the  cool  night,  musical  with   the 
gurgling  of  the  stream    through  the  little 
valley  where  their  barn  was.    They  crouched 
in  a  quarry  by  the  roadside,    a   straggling, 
half-naked  group,  and  watched  the  flashes  in 
the  sky  northward,  where  artillery  along  the 


32     ONE   MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

lines  kept  up  a  continuous  hammering  drum 
beat.  Over  their  heads  shells  shrieked  at 
two-minute  intervals,  to  explode  with  a  rattling 
ripping  sound  in  the  village  on  the  other  side 
of  the  valley. 

"  Damn  foolishness,"  muttered  Tom  Ran 
dolph  in  his  rich  Southern  voice.  "  Why 
don't  those  damn  gunners  go  to  sleep  and  let 
us  go  to  sleep  ?  .  .  .  They  must  be  tired  like 
we  are." 

A  shell  burst  in  a  house  on  the  crest  of  the 
hill  opposite,  so  that  they  saw  the  flash  against 
the  starry  night  sky.  In  the  silence  that 
followed,  the  moaning  shriek  of  a  man  came 
faintly  across  the  valley. 

Martin  sat  on  the  steps  of  the  dugout, 
looking  up  the  shattered  shaft  of  a  tree,  from 
the  top  of  which  a  few  ribbons  of  bark 
fluttered  against  the  mauve  evening  sky.  In 
the  quiet  he  could  hear  the  voices  of  men 
chatting  in  the  dark  below  him,  and, a  sound 
of  someone  whistling  as  he  worked.  Now 
and  then,  like  some  ungainly  bird,  a  high 
calibre  shell  trundled  through  the  air  over 
head  ;  after  its  noise  had  completely  died 
away  would  come  the  thud  of  the  explosion. 
It  was  like  battledore  and  shuttlecock,  these 
huge  masses  whirling  through  the  evening  far 
above  his  head,  now  from  one  side,  now  from 
the  other.  It  gave  him  somehow  a  cosy 
feeling  of  safety,  as  if  he  were  under  some  sort 
of  a  bridge  over  which  freight-cars  were 
shunted  madly  to  and  fro. 

The  doctor  in  charge  of  the  post  came  up 
and  sat  beside  Martin.  He  was  a  small  brown 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     33 

man  with  slim  black  moustaches  that  curved 
like  the  horns  of  a  long-horn  steer.  He  stood 
on  tip-toe  on  the  top  step  and  peered  about  in 
every  direction  with  an  air  of  ownership,  then 
sat  down  again  and  began  talking  briskly. 

'  We  are  exactly  four  hundred  and  five 
metres  from  the  Boche.  .  .  .  Five  hundred 
metres  from  here  they  are  drinking  beer  and 
saying,  '  Hoch  der  Kaiser.' ' 

"  About  as  much  as  we're  saying  '  Vive  la 
Republique,'  I  should  say." 

'  Who  knows  ?  But  it  is  quiet  here,  isn't 
it  ?  It's  quieter  here  than  in  Paris." 

'  The  sky  is  very  beautiful  to-night." 

'  They  say  they're  shelling  the  Etat-Major 
to-day.  Damned  embusques  ;  it'll  do  them 
good  to  get  a  bit  of  their  own  medicine." 

Martin  did  not  answer.  He  was  crossing  in 
his  mind  the  four  hundred  and  five  metres  to 
the  first  Boche  listening-post.  Next  beyond 
the  abris  was  the  latrine  from  which  a  puff  of 
wind  brought  now  and  then  a  nauseous 
stench.  Then  there  was  the  tin  roof,  crumpled 
as  if  by  a  hand,  that  had  been  a  cook  shack. 
That  was  just  behind  the  second  line  trenches 
that  zig-zagged  in  and  out  of  great  abscesses 
of  wet,  upturned  clay  along  the  crest  of  a  little 
hill.  The  other  day  he  had  been  there,  and 
had  clambered  up  the  oily  clay  where  the 
boyau  had  caved  in,  and  from  the  level  of  the 
ground  had  looked  for  an  anxious  minute  or 
two  at  the  tangle  of  trenches  and  pitted 
gangrened  soil  in  the  direction  of  the  German 
outposts.  And  all  along  these  random  gashes 
in  the  mucky  clay  were  men,  feet  and  legs 
huge  from  clotting  after  clotting  of  clay,  men 

c 


34     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

with  greyish-green  faces  scarred  by  lines  of 
strain  and  fear  and  boredom  as  the  hillside 
was  scarred  out  of  all  semblance  by  the 
trenches  and  the  shell-holes. 

"  We  are  well  off  here,"  said  the  doctor 
again.  "  I  have  not  had  a  serious  case  all 
day/' 

'  Up  in  the  front  line  there's  a  place  where 
they've  planted  rhubarb.  .  .  .  You  know, 
where  the  hillside  is  beginning  to  get  rocky." 

"  It  was  the  Boche  who  did  that.  .  .  .  We 
took  that  slope  from  them  two  months  ago. 
.  .  .  How  does  it  grow  ?  " 

"  They  say  the  gas  makes  the  leaves 
shrivel,"  said  Martin,  laughing. 

He  looked  long  at  the  little  ranks  of  clouds 
that  had  begun  to  fill  the  sky,  like  ruffles  on  a 
woman's  dress.  Might  not  it  really  be,  he 
-kept  asking  himself,  that  the  sky  was  a 
beneficent  goddess  who  would  stoop  gently 
out  of  the  infinite  spaces  and  lift  him  to  her 
breast,  where  he  could  lie  amid  the  amber- 
fringed  ruffles  of  cloud  and  look  curiously 
down  at  the  spinning  ball  of  the  earth  ?  It 
might  have  beauty  if  he  were  far  enough  away 
to  clear  his  nostrils  of  the  stench  of  pain. 

"  It  is  funny,"  said  the  little  doctor  sud 
denly,  "  to  think  how  much  nearer  we  are,  in 
state  of  mind,  in  everything,  to  the  Germans 
than  to  anyone  else." 

"  You  mean  that  the  soldiers  in  the  trenches 
are  all  further  from  the  people  at  home  than 
from  each  other,  no  matter  what  side  they 
are  on." 

The  little  doctor  nodded. 

"  God,  it's  so  stupid  !    Why  can't  we  go 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917    35 

over  and  talk  to  them  ?  Nobody's  fighting 
about  anything.  .  .  .  God,  it's  so  hideously 
stupid  !  "  cried  Martin,  suddenly  carried  away, 
helpless  in  the  flood  of  his  passionate  revolt. 

"  Life  is  stupid,"  said  the  little  doctor 
sententiously. 

Suddenly  from  the  lines  came  a  splutter  of 
machine-guns. 

"  Evensong  !  "  cried  the  little  doctor.  "  Ah, 
but  here's  business.  You'd  better  get  your 
car  ready,  my  friend." 

The  brancardiers  set  the  stretcher  down  at 
the  top  of  the  steps  that  led  to  the  door  of  the 
dugout,  so  that  Martin  found  himself  looking 
into  the  lean,  sensitive  face,  stained  a  little 
with  blood  about  the  mouth,  of  the  wounded 
man.  His  eyes  followed  along  the  shapeless 
bundles  of  blood-flecked  uniform  till  they 
suddenly  turned  away.  Where  the  middle  of 
the  man  had  been,  where  had  been  the  curved 
belly  and  the  genitals,  where  the  thighs  had 
joined  with  a  strong  swerving  of  muscles  to 
the  trunk,  was  a  depression,  a  hollow  pool  of 
blood,  that  glinted  a  little  in  the  cold  diffusion 
of  grey  light  from  the  west. 

The  rain  beat  hard  on  the  window-panes  of 
the  little  room  and  hissed  down  the  chimney 
into  the  smouldering  fire  that  sent  up  thick 
green  smoke.  At  a  plain  oak  table  before  the 
fireplace  sat  Martin  Howe  and  Tom  Ran 
dolph,  Tom  Randolph  with  his  sunburned 
hands  with  their  dirty  nails  spread  flat  and 
his  head  resting  on  the  table  between  them, 
so  that  Martin  could  see  the  stiff  black  hair 
on  top  of  his  head  and  the  dark  nape  of  his 


36     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

neck  going  into  shadow  under  the   collar  of 
the  flannel  shirt. 

"  Oh,  God,  it's  too  damned  absurd  !  An 
arrangement  for  mutual  suicide  and  no 
damned  other  thing,"  said  Randolph,  raising 
his  head. 

"  A  certain  jolly  asinine  grotesqueness, 
though.  I  mean,  if  you  were  God  and  could 
look  at  it  like  that  .  .  .  Oh,  Randy,  why  do 
they  enjoy  hatred  so  ?  " 

/'A  question  of  taste  ...  as  the  lady  said 
when  she  kissed  the  cow." 

"  But  it  isn't.     It  isn't  natural  for  people  to 
hate  that  way,  it  can't  be.     It  even  disgusts^ 
the  perfectly  stupid  damn-fool  people,  like 
Higgins,   who  believes  that  the   Bible   was 
written  in  God's  own  handwriting  and  that   i 
the  newspapers  tell  the  truth." 

"  It  makes  me  sick  at  ma  stomach,  Howe, 
to  talk  to  one  of  those  hun-hatin'  women,  if 
they're  male  or  female." 

"  It  is  a  stupid  affair,  la  vie,  as  the  doctor 
at  P.I.  said  yesterday.  .  .  ." 

"  Hell,  yes.  .  .  ." 

They  sat  silent,  watching  the  rain  beat  on 
the  window,  and  run  down  in  sparkling  finger- 
like  streams. 

"  What  I  can't  get  over  is  these  French 
women."  Randolph  threw  back  his  head  and 
laughed.  '  They're  so  bloody  frank.  Did  I 
tell  you  about  what  happened  to  me  at  that 
last  village  on  the  Verdun  road  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  I  was  lyin'  down  for  a  nap  under  a  plum- 
tree,  a  wonderfully  nice  place  near  a  li'l  brook 
an'  all,  an'  suddenly  that  crazy  Jane  .  .  . 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    37 

You  know  the  one  that  used  to  throw  stones 
at  us  out  of  that  broken-down  house  at  the 
corner  of  the  road.  .  .  .  Anyway,  she  comes 
up  to  me  with  a  funny  look  in  her  eyes 
an'  starts  makin'  love  to  me.  I  had  a 
regular  wrastlin'  match  gettin'  away  from 
her." 

"  Funny  position  for  you  to  be  in,  getting 
away  from  a  woman." 

"  But  doesn't  that  strike  you  funny  ?  Why 
down  where  I  come  from  a  drunken  mulatto 
woman  wouldn't  act  like  that.  They  all  keep 
up  a  fake  of  not  wantin'  your  attentions." 
His  black  eyes  sparkled,  and  he  laughed  his 
deep  ringing  laugh,  that  made  the  withered 
woman  smile  as  she  set  an  omelette  before 
them. 

"  Voila,  messieurs,"  she  said  with  a  grand 
air,  as  if  it  were  a  boar's  head  that  she  was 
serving. 

Three  French  infantrymen  came  into  the 
cafe,  shaking  the  rain  off  their  shoulders. 

"  Nothing  to  drink  but  champagne  at  four 
francs  fifty,"  shouted  Howe.  "  Dirty  night 
out,  isn't  it  ?  " 

"  We'll  drink  that,  then  !  " 

Howe  and  Randolph  moved  up  and  they 
all  sat  at  the  same  table. 

"  Fortune  of  war  ?  " 

"  Oh,  the  war,  what  do  you  think  of  the 
war  ?  "  cried  Martin. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  peste?  You 
think  about  saving  your  skin." 

"  What's  amusing  about  us  is  that  we  three 
have  all  saved  our  skins  together,"  said  one  of 
the  Frenchmen. 


38     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  Yes.  We  are  of  the  same  class,"  said 
another,  holding  up  his  thumb.  "  Mobilised 
same  day."  He  held  up  his  first  finger. 
"  Same  company."  He  held  up  a  second 
finger.  "  Wounded  by  the  same  shell.  .  .  . 
Evacuated  to  the  same  hospital.  Con 
valescence  at  same  time.  .  .  .  Reforme  to 
the  same  depot  behind  the  lines." 

"  Didn't  all  marry  the  same  girl,  did  you, 
to  make  it  complete  ?  "  asked  Randolph. 

They  all  shouted  with  laughter  until  the 
glasses  along  the  bar  rang. 

"  You  must  be  Athos,  Porthos,  and 
d'Artagnan." 

'  We  are,"  they  shouted. 

"  Some  more  champagne,  madame,  for  the 
three  musketeers,"  sang  Randolph  in  a  sort 
of  operatic  yodle. 

"  All  I  have  left  is  this,"  said  the  withered 
woman,  setting  a  bottle  down  on  the  table. 

"  Is  that  poison  ?  " 

"  It's  cognac,  it's  very  good  cognac,"  said 
the  old  woman  seriously. 

"  C'est  du  cognac  !  Vive  le  roi  cognac  !  " 
everybody  shouted. 


"  Au  plein  de  mon  cognac 
Qu'ilfait  bon,fait  bon,  fait  bon, 
Au  plein  de  mon  cognac 
Qu'ilfait  bon  dormir." 


"  Down  with  the  war  !  Who  can  sing  the 
'  Internationale  '  ?  " 

"  Not  so  much  noise,  I  beg  you,  gentle 
men,"  came  the  withered  woman's  whining 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    39 

voice.     "It's  after  hours.    Last  week  I  was 
fined.     Next  time  I'll  be  closed  up." 

The  night  was  black  when  Martin  and 
Randolph,  after  lengthy  and  elaborate  fare 
wells,  started  down  the  muddy  road  towards 
the  hospital.  They  staggered  along  the 
slippery  footpath  beside  the  road,  splashed 
every  instant  with  mud  by  camions,  huge  and 
dark,  that  roared  grindingly  by.  They  ran 
and  skipped  arm-in-arm  and  shouted  at  the 
top  of  their  lungs  : 

"  Aupres  de  ma  blonde, 
Qu'ilfait  bon,fait  bon,  fait  bon, 
Aupres  de  ma  blonde, 
Qu'ilfait  bon  dormir." 

A  stench  of  sweat  and  filth  and  formalde 
hyde  caught  them  by  the  throat  as  they  went 
into  the  hospital  tent,  gave  them  a  sense  of 
feverish  bodies  of  men  stretched  all  about 
them,  stirring  in  pain. 

"  A  car  for  la  Bassee,  Ambulance  4,"  said 
the  orderly. 

Howe  got  himself  up  off  the  hospital 
stretcher,  shoving  his  flannel  shirt  back  into 
his  breeches,  put  on  his  coat  and  belt  and  felt 
his  way  to  the  door,  stumbling  over  the  legs 
of  sleeping  brancardiers  as  he  went.  Men 
swore  in  their  sleep  and  turned  over  heavily. 
At  the  door  he  waited  a  minute,  then  shouted  : 

"  Coming,  Tom  ?  " 

"Too  damn  sleepy,"  came  Randolph's 
voice  from  under  a  blanket. 

"  I've  got  cigarettes,  Tom.  I'll  smoke  'em 
all  up  if  you  don't  come." 


40     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

"  All  right,  I'll  come." 

"  Less  noise,  name  of  God  !  "  cried  a  man, 
sitting  up  on  his  stretcher. 

After  the  hospital,  smelling  of  chloride  and 
blankets  and  reeking  clothes,  the  night  air 
was  unbelievably  sweet.  Like  a  gilt  fringe  on 
a  dark  shawl,  a  little  band  of  brightness  had 
appeared  in  the  east. 

"  Some  dawn,  Howe,  ain't  it  ?  " 

As  they  were  going  off,  their  motor  chugging 
regularly,  an  orderly  said  : 

"  It's  a  special  case.  Go  for  orders  to  the 
commandant." 

Colours  formed  gradually  out  of  chaotic 
grey  as  the  day  brightened.  At  the  dressing- 
station  an  attendant  ran  up  to  the  car. 

"  Oh,  you're  for  the  special  case  ?  Have  you 
anything  to  tie  a  man  with  ?  ' 

"  No,  why  ?  " 

"  It's  nothing.  He  just  tried  to  stab  the 
sergeant-major." 

The  attendant  raised  a  fist  and  tapped  on 
his  head  as  if  knocking  on  a  door.     "  It's 
nothing.     He's  quieter  now." 
'  What  caused  it  ?  " 

'  Who  knows  ?     There  is  so  much.  ...  He 
says  he  must  kill  everyone.  ..." 

"  Are  you  ready  ?  " 

A  lieutenant  of  the  medical  corps  came 
to  the  door  and  looked  out.  He  smiled 
reassuringly  at  Martin  Howe.  "  He's  not 
violent  any  more.  And  we'll  send  two 
guardians." 

A  sergeant  came  out  with  a  little  packet 
which  he  handed  to  Martin. 

"  That's  his.     Will  you  give  it  to  them  at 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    41 

the  hospital  at  Fourreaux  ?  And  here's  his 
knife.  They  can  give  it  back  to  him  when  he 
gets  better.  He  has  an  idea  he  ought  to  kill 
everyone  he  sees.  .  .  .  Funny  idea." 

The  sun  had  risen  and  shone  gold  across 
the  broad  rolling  lands,  so  that  the  hedges  and 
the  poplar-rows  cast  long  blue  shadows  over 
the  fields.  The  man,  with  a  guardian  on 
either  side  of  him  who  cast  nervous  glances  to 
the  right  and  to  the  left,  came  placidly,  eyes 
straight  in  front  of  him,  out  of  the  dark 
interior  of  the  dressing-station.  He  was  a 
small  man  with  moustaches  and  small,  good- 
natured  lips  puffed  into  an  o-shape.  At  the 
car  he  turned  and  saluted. 

"  Good-bye,  my  lieutenant.  Thank  you 
for  your  kindness,"  he  said. 

"  Good-bye,  old  chap,"  said  the  lieutenant. 

The  little  man  stood  up  in  the  car,  looking 
about  him  anxiously. 

"  I've  lost  my  knife.     Where's  my  knife  ?  " 

The  guards  got  in  behind  him  with  a 
nervous,  sheepish  air.  They  answered  re 
assuringly,  '  The  driver's  got  it.  The 
American's  got  it." 

"  Good." 

The  orderly  jumped  on  the  seat  with  the 
two  Americans  to  show  the  way.  He  whis 
pered  in  Martin's  ear  : 

"  He's  crazy.  He  says  that  to  stop  the  war 
you  must  kill  everybody,  kill  everybody." 

In  an  open  valley  that  sloped  between  hills 
covered  with  beech-woods,  stood  the  tall 
abbey,  a  Gothic  nave  and  apse  with  beauti 
fully  traced  windows,  with  the  ruin  of  a  very 


42     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

ancient  chapel  on  one  side,  and  crossing  the 
back,  a  well-proportioned  Renaissance  build 
ing  that  had  been  a  dormitory.  The  first 
time  that  Martin  saw  the  abbey,  it  towered  in 
ghostly  perfection  above  a  low  veil  of  mist 
that  made  the  valley  seem  a  lake  in  the 
shining  moonlight.  The  lines  were  perfectly 
quiet,  and  when  he  stopped  the  motor  of  his 
ambulance,  he  could  hear  the  wind  rustling 
among  the  beech-woods.  Except  for  the 
dirty  smell  of  huddled  soldiers  that  came  now 
and  then  in  drifts  along  with  the  cool  wood- 
scents,  there  might  have  been  no  war  at  all. 
In  the  soft  moonlight  the  great  traceried 
windows  and  the  buttresses  and  the  high- 
pitched  roof  seemed  as  gorgeously  untroubled 
by  decay  as  if  the  carvings  on  the  cusps  and 
arches  had  just  come  from  under  the  careful 
chisels  of  the  Gothic  workmen. 

"  And  you  say  we've  progressed,"  he 
whispered  to  Tom  Randolph. 

"  God,  it  is  fine." 

They  wandered  up  and  down  the  road 
a  long  time,  silently,  looking  at  the  tall  apse 
of  the  abbey,  breathing  the  cool  night  air, 
moist  with  mist,  in  which  now  and  then  was 
the  huddled,  troubling  smell  of  soldiers.  At 
last  the  moon,  huge  and  swollen  with  gold, 
set  behind  the  wooded  hills,  and  they  went 
back  to  the  car,  where  they  rolled  up  in  their 
blankets  and  went  to  sleep. 

Behind  the  square  lantern  that  rose  over 
the  crossing,  there  was  a  trap  door  in  the 
broken  tile  roof,  from  which  you  could  climb 
to  the  observation  post  in  the  lantern.  Here, 
half  on  the  roof  and  half  on  the  platform 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    43 

behind  the  trap-door,  Martin  would  spend  the 
long  summer  afternoons  when  there  was  no 
call  for  the  ambulance,  looking  at  the  Gothic 
windows  of  the  lantern  and  the  blue  sky 
beyond,  where  huge  soft  clouds  passed  slowly 
over,  darkening  the  green  of  the  woods  and 
of  the  weed-grown  fields  of  the  valley  with 
their  moving  shadows. 

There  was  almost  no  activity  on  that  part 
of  the  front.  A  couple  of  times  a  day  a  few 
snapping  discharges  would  come  from  the 
seventy-fives  of  the  battery  behind  the  Abbey, 
and  the  woods  would  resound  like  a  shaken 
harp  as  the  shells  passed  over  to  explode  on 
the  crest  of  the  hill  that  blocked  the  end  of  the 
valley  where  the  Boches  were. 

Martin  would  sit  and  dream  of  the  quiet 
lives  the  monks  must  have  passed  in  their 
beautiful  abbey  so  far  away  in  the  Forest  of 
the  Argonne,  digging  and  planting  in  the  rich 
lands  of  the  valley,  making  flowers  bloom  in 
the  garden,  of  which  traces  remained  in  the 
huge  beds  of  sunflowers  and  orange  marigolds 
that  bloomed  along  the  walls  of  the  dormitory. 
In  a  room  in  the  top  of  the  house  he  had  found 
a  few  torn  remnants  of  books  ;  there  must 
have  been  a  library  in  the  old  days,  rows  and 
rows  of  musty-smelling  volumes  in  rich  brown 
calf  worn  by  use  to  a  velvet  softness,  and  in 
cream-coloured  parchment  where  the  finger 
marks  of  generations  showed  brown;  huge 
psalters  with  notes  and  chants  illuminated  in 
green  and  ultramarine  and  gold ;  manuscripts 
out  of  the  Middle  Ages  with  strange  script  and 
pictures  in  pure  vivid  colours ;  lives  of  saints, 
thoughts  polished  by  years  of  quiet  meditation 


44        ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

of  old  divines;  old  romances  of  chivalry; 
tales  of  blood  and  death  and  love  where  the 
crude  agony  of  life  was  seen  through  a  dawn- 
like  mist  of  gentle  beauty. 

"  God!  if  there  were  somewhere  nowadays 
where  you  could  flee  from  all  this  stupidity, 
from  all  this  cant  of  governments,  and  this 
hideous  reiteration  of  hatred,  this  strangling 
hatred  .  .  ."he  would  say  to  himself,  and  see 
himself  working  in  the  fields,  copying  parch 
ments  in  quaint  letterings,  drowsing  his 
feverish  desires  to  calm  in  the  deep-throated 
passionate  chanting  of  the  endless  offices  of 
the  Church. 

One  afternoon  towards  evening  as  he  lay 
on  the  tiled  roof  with  his  shirt  open  so  that 
the  sun  warmed  his  throat  and  chest,  half 
asleep  in  the  beauty  of  the  building  and  of 
the  woods  and  the  clouds  that  drifted  over 
head,  he  heard  a  strain  from  the  organ  in  the 
church:  a  few  deep  notes  in  broken  rhythm 
that  filled  him  with  wonder,  as  if  he  had 
suddenly  been  transported  back  to  the  quiet 
days  of  the  monks.  The  rhythm  changed  in 
an  instant,  and  through  the  squeakiness  of 
shattered  pipes  came  a  swirl  of  fake-oriental 
ragtime  that  resounded  like  mocking  laughter 
in  the  old  vaults  and  arches.  He  went  down 
into  the  church  and  found  Tom  Randolph 
playing  on  the  little  organ,  pumping  des 
perately  with  his  feet. 

'  Hello  !  Impiety  I  call  it  ;  putting  your 
lustful  tunes  into  that  pious  old  organ." 

"  I  bet  the  ole  monks  had  a  merry  time, 
lecherous  ole  devils,"  said  Tom,  playing 
away. 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    45 

"  If  there  were  monasteries  nowadays," 
said  Martin,  "  I  think  I'd  go  into  one." 

"  But  there  are.  I'll  end  up  in  one,  most 
like,  if  they  don't  put  me  in  jail  first.  I 
reckon  every  living  soul  would  be  a  candidate 
for  either  one  if  it'd  get  them  out  of  this 
God-damned  war." 

There  was  a  shriek  overhead  that  re 
verberated  strangely  in  the  vaults  of  the 
church  and  made  the  swallows  nesting  there 
fly  in  and  out  through  the  glassless  windows. 
Tom  Randolph  stopped  on  a  wild  chord. 

"  Guess  they  don't  like  me  playin'." 

'  That  one  didn't  explode  though." 

'  That  one  did,  by  gorry,"  said  Randolph, 
getting  up  off  the  floor,  where  he  had  thrown 
himself  automatically.  A  shower  of  tiles 
came  rattling  off  the  roof,  and  through  the 
noise  could  be  heard  the  frightened  squeaking 
of  the  swallows. 

'  I  am  afraid  that  winged  somebody." 

'  They  must  have  got  wind  of  the  am 
munition  dump  in  the  cellar." 

"  Hell  of  a  place  to  put  a  dressing-station — 
over  an  ammunition  dump  !  " 

The  whitewashed  room  used  as  a  dressing- 
station  had  a  smell  of  blood  stronger  than 
the  chloride.  A  doctor  was  leaning  over  a 
stretcher  on  which  Martin  caught  a  glimpse 
of  two  naked  legs  with  flecks  of  blood  on  the 
white  skin,  as  he  passed  through  on  his  way 
to  the  car. 

"  Three  stretcher-cases  for  Les  Islettes. 
Very  softly,"  said  the  attendant,  handing 
him  the  papers. 

Jolting  over  the  shell-pitted  road,  the  car 


46    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

wound  slowly  through  unploughed  weed- 
grown  fields.  At  every  jolt  came  a  rasping 
groan  from  the  wounded  men. 

As  they  came  back  towards  the  front  posts 
again,  they  found  all  the  batteries  along  the 
road  firing.  The  air  was  a  chaos  of  ex 
plosions  that  jabbed  viciously  into  their  ears, 
above  the  reassuring  purr  of  the  motor. 
Nearly  to  the  abbey  a  soldier  stopped  them. 

"  Put  the  car  behind  the  trees  and 
get  into  a  dugout.  They're  shelling  the 
abbey." 

As  he  spoke  a  whining  shriek  grew  suddenly 
loud  over  their  heads.  The  soldier  threw 
himself  flat  in  the  muddy  road.  The  ex 
plosion  brought  gravel  about  their  ears  and 
made  a  curious  smell  of  almonds. 

Crowded  in  the  door  of  the  dugout  in  the 
hill  opposite  they  watched  the  abbey  as  shell 
after  shell  tore  through  the  roof  or  exploded 
in  the  strong  buttresses  of  the  apse.  Dust 
rose  high  above  the  roof  and  filled  the  air 
with  an  odour  of  damp  tiles  and  plaster.  The 
woods  resounded  in  a  jangling  tremor,  with 
the  batteries  that  started  firing  one  after  the 
other. 

"  God,  I  hate  them  for  that !  "  said  Ran 
dolph  between  his  teeth. 

"  What  do  you  want  ?  It's  an  observation 
post." 

"  I  know,  but  damn  it !  " 

There  was  a  series  of  explosions  ;  a  shell 
fragment  whizzed  past  their  heads. 

"  It's  not  safe  there.  You'd  better  come 
in  all  the  way,"  someone  shouted  from  within 
the  dugout. 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    47 

"  I  want  to  see  ;  damn  it.  ...  I'm  goin' 
to  stay  and  see  it  out,  Howe.  That  place 
meant  a  hell  of  a  lot  to  me."  Randolph 
blushed  as  he  spoke. 

Another  bunch  of  shells  crashing  so  near 
together  they  did  not  hear  the  scream.  When 
the  cloud  of  dust  blew  away,  they  saw  that 
the  lantern  had  fallen  in  on  the  roof  of  the 
apse,  leaving  only  one  wall  and  the  tracery  of 
a  window,  of  which  the  shattered  carving 
stood  out  cream-white  against  the  reddish 
evening  sky. 

There  was  a  lull  in  the  firing.  A  few 
swallows  still  wheeled  about  the  walls,  giving 
shrill  little  cries. 

They  saw  the  flash  of  a  shell  against  the 
sky  as  it  exploded  in  the  part  of  the  tall  roof 
that  still  remained.  The  roof  crumpled  and 
fell  in,  and  again  dust  hid  the  abbey. 

"  Oh,  I  hate  this  !  "  said  Tom  Randolph. 
"  But  the  question  is,  what's  happened  to  our 
grub  ?  The  popote  is  buried  four  feet  deep 
in  Gothic  art.  .  .  .  Damn  fool  idea,  putting 
a  dressing-station  over  an  ammunition  dump." 

"  Is  the  car  hit  ?  "  The  orderly  came  up 
to  them. 

"  Don't  think  so." 

"  Good.  Four  stretcher-cases  for  42  at 
once." 

At  night  in  a  dugout.  Five  men  playing 
cards  about  a  lamp-flame  that  blows  from  one 
side  to  the  other  in  the  gusty  wind  that  puffs 
every  now  and  then  down  the  mouth  of  the 
dugout  and  whirls  round  it  like  something 
alive  trying  to  beat  a  way  out. 


48     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

Each  time  the  lamp  blows  the  shadows  of 
the  five  heads  writhe  upon  the  corrugated  tin 
ceiling.  In  the  distance,  like  kettle-drums 
beaten  for  a  dance,  a  constant  reverberation 
of  guns. 

Martin  Howe,  stretched  out  in  the  straw  of 
one  of  the  bunks,  watches  their  faces  in  the 
flickering  shadows.  He  wishes  he  had  the 
patience  to  play  too.  No,  perhaps  it  is 
^  better  to  look  on ;  it  would  be  so  silly  to  be 
killed  in  the  middle  of  one  of  those  grand 
gestures  one  makes  in  slamming  the  card 
down  that  takes  the  trick.  Suddenly  he 
thinks  of  all  the  lives  that  must,  in  these  last 
three  years,  have  ended  in  that  grand  gesture. 
It  is  too  silly.  He  seems  to  see  their  poor 
lacerated  souls,  clutching  their  greasy  dog 
eared  cards,  climb  to  a  squalid  Valhalla, 
and  there,  in  tobacco-stinking,  sweat-stinking 
rooms,  like  those  of  the  little  cafes  behind 
the  lines,  sit  in  groups  of  five,  shuffling,  deal 
ing,  taking  tricks,  always  with  the  same  slam 
of  the  cards  on  the  table,  pausing  now  and 
then  to  scratch  their  louse-eaten  flesh. 

At  this  moment,  how  many  men,  in  all  the 
long  Golgotha  that  stretches  from  Belfort  to 
the  sea,  must  be  trying  to  cheat  their  boredom 
and  their  misery  with  that  grand  gesture  of 
slamming  the  cards  down  to  take  a  trick, 
while  in  their  ears,  like  tom-toms,  pounds  the 
death-dance  of  the  guns. 

Martin  lies  on  his  back  looking  up  at  the 
curved  corrugated  ceiling  of  the  dugout,  where 
the  shadows  of  the  five  heads  writhe  in 
fantastic  shapes.  Is  it  death  they  are  playing, 
that  they  are  so  merry  when  they  take  a  trick  ? 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  three  planes  gleamed  like  mica  in 
the  intense  blue  of  the  sky.  Round 
about  the  shrapnel  burst  in  little 
puffs  like  cotton-wool.  A  shout  went  up  from 
the  soldiers  who  stood  in  groups  in  the  street  of 
the  ruined  town.  A  whistle  split  the  air, 
followed  by  a  rending  snort  that  tailed  off 
into  the  moaning  of  a  wounded  man. 

"  By  damn,  they're  nervy.  They  dropped 
a  bomb." 

'  I  should  say  they  did." 

'  The  dirty  bastards,  to  get  a  fellow  who's 
going  on  permission.  Now  if  they  beaded  you 
on  the  way  back  you  wouldn't  care." 

In  the  sky  an  escadrille  of  French  planes 
had  appeared  and  the  three  German  specks 
had  vanished,  followed  by  a  trail  of  little  puffs 
of  shrapnel.  The  indigo  dome  of  the  after 
noon  sky  was  full  of  a  distant  snoring  of 
motors. 

The  train  screamed  outside  the  station  and 
the  permissionaires  ran  for  the  platform, 
their  packed  musettes  bouncing  at  their  hips. 

The  dark  boulevards,  with  here  and  there  a 
blue  lamp  lighting  up  a  bench  and  a  few  tree- 
trunks,  or  a  faint  glow  from  inside  a  closed 
cafe  where  a  boy  in  shirt-sleeves  is  sweep 
ing  the  floor.  Crowds  of  soldiers,  Belgians, 
Americans,  Canadians,  civilians  with  canes 

D 


50     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

and  straw  hats  and  well-dressed  women  on 
their  arms,  shop-girls  in  twos  and  threes 
laughing  with  shrill,  merry  voices ;  and 
everywhere  girls  of  the  street,  giggling  allur 
ingly  in  hoarse,  dissipated  tones,  clutching  the 
arms  of  drunken  soldiers,  tilting  themselves 
temptingly  in  men's  way  as  they  walk  along. 
Cigarettes  and  cigars  make  spots  of  reddish 
light,  and  now  and  then  a  match  lighted 
makes  a  man's  face  stand  out  in  yellow  relief 
and  glints  red  in  the  eyes  of  people  round 
about. 

Drunk  with  their  freedom,  with  the  jangle 
of  voices,  with  the  rustle  of  trees  in  the  faint 
light,  with  the  scents  of  women's  hair  and 
cheap  perfumes,  Howe  and  Randolph  stroll 
along  slowly,  down  one  side  to  the  shadowy 
columns  of  the  Madeleine,  where  a  few  flower- 
women  still  offer  roses,  scenting  the  darkness, 
then  back  again  past  the  Opera  towards  the 
Porte  St.  Martin,  lingering  to  look  in  the 
offered  faces  of  women,  to  listen  to  snatches 
of  talk,  to  chatter  laughingly  with  girls  who 
squeeze  their  arms  with  impatience. 

"  I'm  goin'  to  find  the  prettiest  girl  in 
Paris,  and  then  you'll  see  the  dust  fly,  Howe, 
old  man." 

The  hors  d'ceuvre  came  on  a  circular  three- 
tiered  stand  ;  red  strips  of  herrings  and  silver 
anchovies,  salads  where  green  peas  and  bits 
of  carrot  lurked  under  golden  layers  of  sauce, 
sliced  tomatoes,  potato  salad  green-specked 
with  parsley,  hard-boiled  eggs  barely  visible 
under  thickness  of  vermilion-tinged  dressing, 
olives,  radishes,  discs  of  sausage  of  many 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    51 

different  forms  and  colours,  complicated 
bundles  of  spiced  salt  fish,  and,  forming  the 
apex,  a  fat  terra-cotta  jar  of  pate  de  foie  gras. 
Howe  poured  out  pale-coloured  Chablis. 

"  I  used  to  think  that  down  home  was  the 
only  place  they  knew  how  to  live,  but  oh, 
boy  ..."  said  Tom  Randolph,  breaking  a 
little  loaf  of  bread  that  made  a  merry 
crackling  sound. 

"It's  worth  starving  to  death  on  singe  and 
pinard  for  four  months." 

After  the  hors  d'ceuvre  had  been  taken 
away,  leaving  them  Rabelaisianly  gay,  with  a 
joyous  sense  of  orgy,  came  sole  hidden  in  a 
cream-coloured  sauce  with  mussels  in  it. 

"  After  the  war,  Howe,  ole  man,  let's  riot 
all  over  Europe  ;  I'm  getting  a  taste  for  this 
sort  of  livin'." 

"  You  can  play  the  fiddle,  can't  you, 
Tom  ?  " 

"  Enough  to  scrape  out  Aupres  de  ma 
blonde  on  a  bet." 

"  Then  we'll  wander  about  and  you  can 
support  me.  ...  Or  else  I'll  dress  as  a 
monkey  and  you  can  fiddle  and  I'll  gather 
the  pennies." 

"  By  gum,  that'd  be  great  sport." 

"  Look,  we  must  have  some  red  wine  with 
the  veal." 

"  Let's  have  Macon." 

"  All  the  same  to  me  as  long  as  there's 
plenty  of  it." 

Their  round  table  with  its  white  cloth  and 
its  bottles  of  wine  and  its  piles  of  ravished 
artichoke  leaves  was  the  centre  of  a  noisy, 
fantastic  world.  Ever  since  the  orgy  of  the 


52     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

hors  d'ceuvres  things  had  been  evolving  to 
grotesqueness,  faces,  whites  of  eyes,  twisted 
red  of  lips,  crow-like  forms  of  waiters,  colours 
of  hats  and  uniforms,  all  involved  and 
jumbled  in  the  melee  of  talk  and  clink  and 
clatter. 

The  red  hand  of  the  waiter  pouring  the 
Chartreuse,  green  like  a  stormy  sunset,  into 
small  glasses  before  them  broke  into  the  vivid 
imaginings  that  had  been  unfolding  in  their 
talk  through  dinner.  No,  they  had  been 
saying,  it  could  not  go  on  ;  some  day  amid  the 
rending  crash  of  shells  and  the  whine  of 
shrapnel  fragments,  people  everywhere,  in  all 
uniforms,  in  trenches,  packed  in  camions,  in 
stretchers,  in  hospitals,  crowded  behind  guns, 
involved  in  telephone  apparatus,  generals  at 
their  dinner-tables,  colonels  sipping  liqueurs, 
majors  developing  photographs,  would  jump 
to  their  feet  and  burst  out  laughing  at  the 
solemn  inanity,  at  the  stupid,  vicious  pom 
posity  of  what  they  were  doing.  Laughter 
would  untune  the  sky.  It  would  be  a  new 
progress  of  Bacchus.  Drunk  with  laughter  at 
the  sudden  vision  of  the  silliness  of  the 
world,  officers  and  soldiers,  prisoners  working 
on  the  roads,  deserters  being  driven  towards 
the  trenches  would  throw  down  their  guns 
and  their  spades  and  their  heavy  packs,  and 
start  marching,  or  driving  in  artillery  waggons 
or  in  camions,  staff  cars,  private  trains, 
towards  their  capitals,  where  they  would 
laugh  the  deputies,  the  senators,  the  congress 
men,  the  M.P.'s  out  of  their  chairs,  laugh  the 
presidents  and  the  prime  ministers,  and 
kaisers  and  dictators  out  of  their  plush- 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     53 

carpeted  offices  ;  the  sun  would  wear  a  broad 

grin  and  would  whisper  the  joke  to  the  moon, 

who  would  giggle  and  ripple  with  it  all  night 

long.  .  .  .  The  red  hand  of  the  waiter,  with 

thick  nails  and  work-swollen  knuckles,  poured 

Chartreuse  into  the  small  glasses  before  them. 

'  That,"  said  Tom  Randolph,  when  he  had 

half  finished  his  liqueur,  "  is  the  girl  for  me." 

'  But,  Tom,  she's  with  a  French  officer." 

'  They're  fighting  like  cats  and  dogs.     You 

can  see  that,  can't  you  ?  " 

'  Yes,"  agreed  Howe  vaguely. 

"  Pay  the  bill.  I'll  meet  you  at  the 
corner  of  the  boulevard."  Tom  Randolph 
was  out  of  the  door.  The  girl,  who  had  a 
little  of  the  aspect  of  a  pierrot,  with  dark  skin 
and  bright  lips  and  gold-yellow  hat  and 
dress,  and  the  sour-looking  officer  who  was 
with  her,  were  getting  up  to  go. 

At  the  corner  of  the  Boulevard  Howe  heard 
a  woman's  voice  joining  with  Randolph's  rich 
laugh. 

"  What  did  I  tell  you  ?  They  split  at  the 
door  and  here  we  are,  Howe.  .  .  .  Made 
moiselle  Montreil,  let  me  introduce  a  friend. 
Look,  before  it's  too  late,  we  must  have  a 
drink." 

At  the  cafe  table  next  them  an  Englishman 
was  seated  with  his  head  sunk  on  his  chest. 

"  Oh,  I  say,  you  woke  me  up." 

11  Sorry." 

"  No  harm.     Jolly  good  thing." 

They  invited  him  over  to  their  table.  There 
was  a  moist  look  about  his  eyes  and  a  thick 
ness  to  his  voice  that  denoted  alcohol. 

"  You  mustn't  mind  me.     I'm  forgetting. 


54     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

.  .  .  I've  been  doing  it  for  a  week.  This  is 
the  first  leave  I've  had  in  eighteen  months. 
You  Canadians  ?  " 

"No.     Ambulance  service ;    Americans." 

"  New  at  the  game  then.  You're  lucky. 
.  .  .  Before  I  left  the  front  I  saw  a  man  tuck 
a  hand-grenade  under  the  pillow  of  a  poor 
devil  of  a  German  prisoner.  The  prisoner 
said,  '  Thank  you.'  The  grenade  blew  him  to 
hell !  God  !  Know  anywhere  you  can  get 
whisky  in  this  bloody  town  ?  " 

"  We'll  have  to  hurry  ;  it's  near  closing- 
time." 

"  Right-o." 

They  started  off,  Randolph  and  the  girl 
talking  intimately,  their  heads  close  together, 
Martin  supporting  the  Englishman. 

"  I  need  a  bit  o'  whisky  to  put  me  on  my 
pins." 

They  tumbled  into  the  seats  round  a  table 
at  an  American  bar. 

The  Englishman  felt  in  his  pocket. 

"  Oh,  I  say,"  he  cried,  "  I've  got  a  ticket 
to  the  theatre.  It's  a  box.  .  .  .  We  can  all 
get  in.  Come  along  ;  let's  hurry." 

They  walked  a  long  while,  blundering 
through  the  dark  streets,  and  at  last  stopped 
at  a  blue-lighted  door. 

'  Here  it  is  ;  push  in." 

"  But  there  are  two  gentlemen  and  a  lady 
already  in  the  box,  meester." 

"  No  matter,  there'll  be  room."  The 
Englishman  waved  the  ticket  in  the  air. 

The  little  round  man  with  a  round  red  face 
who  was  taking  the  tickets  stuttered  in  bad 
English  and  then  dropped  into  French.  Mean- 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    55 

while,  the  whole  party  had  filed  in,  leaving  the 
Englishman,  who  kept  waving  the  ticket  in  the 
little  man's  face. 

Two  gendarmes,  the  theatre  guards,  came 
up  menacingly ;  the  Englishman's  face 
wreathed  itself  in  smiles  ;  he  linked  an  arm  in 
each  of  the  gendarmes',  and  pushed  them 
towards  the  bar. 

"  Come  drink  to  the  Entente  Cordiale.  .  . 
Vive  la  France !  " 

In  the  box  were  two  Australians  and  a 
woman  who  leaned  her  head  on  the  chest  of 
one  and  then  the  other  alternately,  laughing 
so  that  you  could  see  the  gold  caps  in  her 
black  teeth. 

They  were  annoyed  at  the  intrusion  that 
packed  the  box  insupportably  tight,  so  that 
the  woman  had  to  sit  on  the  men's  laps,  but 
the  air  soon  cleared  in  laughter  that  caused 
people  in  the  orchestra  to  stare  angrily  at  the 
box  full  of  noisy  men  in  khaki.  At  last  the 
Englishman  came,  squeezing  himself  in  with 
a  finger  mysteriously  on  his  lips.  He  plucked 
at  Martin's  arm,  a  serious  set  look  coming 
suddenly  over  his  grey  eyes.  "  It  was  like 
this  " — his  breath  laden  with  whisky  was  like 
a  halo  round  Martin's  head — "  the  Hun  was 
a  nice  little  chap,  couldn't  'a'  been  more  than 
eighteen  ;  had  a  shoulder  broken  and  he 
thought  that  my  pal  was  fixing  the  pillow. 
He  said  '  Thank  you '  with  a  funny  German 
accent.  ...  Mind  you,  he  said  '  Thank  you ' ; 
that's  what  hurt.  And  the  man  laughed. 
God  damn  him,  he  laughed  when  the  poor 
devil  said '  Thank  you.'  And  the  grenade  blew 
him  to  hell." 


56    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

The  stage  was  a  glare  of  light  in  Martin's 
eyes  ;  he  felt  as  he  had  when  at  home  he  had 
leaned  over  and  looked  straight  into  the 
headlight  of  an  auto  drawn  up  to  the  side  of 
the  road.  Screening  him  from  the  glare  were 
the  backs  of  people's  heads  :  Tom  Randolph's 
head  and  his  girl's,  side  by  side,  their  cheeks 
touching,  the  pointed  red  chin  of  one  of  the 
Australians  and  the  frizzy  hair  of  the  other 
woman. 

In  the  entr'acte  they  all  stood  at  the  bar, 
where  it  was  very  hot  and  an  orchestra  was 
playing  and  there  were  many  men  in  khaki 
in  all  stages  of  drunkenness,  being  led  about 
by  women  who  threw  jokes  at  each  other 
behind  the  men's  backs. 

"  Here's  to  mud,"  said  one  of  the  Aus 
tralians.  '  The  war'll  end  when  everybody  is 
drowned  in  mud." 

The  orchestra  began  playing  the  Madelon 
and  everyone  roared  out  the  marching  song 
that,  worn  threadbare  as  it  was,  still  had  a 
roistering  verve  to  it  that  caught  people's 
blood. 

People  had  gone  back  for  the  last  act.  The 
two  Australians,  the  Englishman,  and  the  two 
Americans  still  stood  talking. 

"  Mind  you,  I'm  not  what  you'd  call  sus 
ceptible.  I'm  not  soft.  I  got  over  all  that 
long  ago."  The  Englishman  was  addressing 
the  company  in  general.  '  But  the  poor 
beggar  said  '  Thank  you.' ' 

"  What's  he  saying  ?  "  asked  a  woman, 
plucking  at  Martin's  arm. 

"  He's  telling  about  a  German  atrocity." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917     57 

"  Oh,  the  dirty  Germans  !  What  things 
they've  done  !  "  the  woman  answered  me 
chanically. 

Somehow,  during  the  entr'acte,  the  Aus 
tralians  had  collected  another  woman ;  and  a 
strange  fat  woman  with  lips  painted  very 
small,  and  very  large  bulging  eyes,  had 
attached  herself  to  Martin.  He  suffered  her 
because  every  time  he  looked  at  her  she  burst 
out  laughing. 

The  bar  was  closing.  They  had  a  drink  of 
champagne  all  round  that  made  the  fat 
woman  give  little  shrieks  of  delight.  They 
drifted  towards  the  door,  and  stood,  a  formless, 
irresolute  group,  in  the  dark  street  in  front  of 
the  theatre. 

Randolph  came  up  to  Martin. 

"  Look.  We're  goin'.  I  wonder  if  I  ought 
to  leave  my  money  with  you  ..." 

"  I  doubt  if  I'm  a  safe  person  to-night  .  .  ." 

"  All  right.  I'll  take  it  along.  Look  .  .  . 
let's  meet  for  breakfast." 

"  At  the  Caft  de  la  Paix." 

"  All  right.     If  she  is  nice  I'll  bring  her." 

"  She  looks  charming." 

Tom  Randolph  pressed  Martin's  hand  and 
was  off.  There  was  a  sound  of  a  kiss  in  the 
darkness. 

"  I  say,  I've  got  to  have  something  to  eat," 
said  the  Englishman.  "  I  didn't  have  a  bit 
of  dinner.  I  say — mangai,  mangai."  He  made 
gestures  of  putting  things  into  his  mouth  in 
the  direction  of  the  fat  woman. 

The  three  women  put  their  heads  together. 
One  of  them  knew  a  place,  but  it  was  a 


58     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

dreadful  place.  Really,  they  mustn't  think 
that  .  .  .  She  only  knew  it  because  when  she 
was  very  young  a  man  had  taken  her  there 
who  wanted  to  seduce  her. 

At  that  everyone  laughed  and  the  voices 
of  the  women  rose  shrill. 

"  All  right,  don't  talk  ;  let's  go  there,"  said 
one  of  the  Australians.  "  We'll  attend  to  the 
seducing." 

A  thick  woman,  a  tall  comb  in  the  back  of 
her  high-piled  black  hair,  and  an  immovable 
face  with  jaw  muscled  like  a  prize-fighter's, 
served  them  with  cold  chicken  and  ham  and 
champagne  in  a  room  with  mouldering 
greenish  wall-paper  lighted  by  a  red-shaded 
lamp. 

The  Australians  ate  and  sang  and  made  love 
to  their  women.  The  Englishman  went  to 
sleep  with  his  head  on  the  table. 

Martin  leaned  back  out  of  the  circle  of  light, 
keeping  up  a  desultory  conversation  with  the 
woman  beside  him,  listening  to  the  sounds  of 
the  men's  voices  down  corridors,  of  the  front 
door  being  opened  and  slammed  again  and 
again,  and  of  forced,  shrill  giggles  of  women. 

"  Unfortunately,  I  have  an  engagement 
to-night,"  said  Martin  to  the  woman  beside 
him,  whose  large  spherical  breasts  heaved  as 
she  talked,  and  who  rolled  herself  nearer  to 
him  invitingly,  seeming  with  her  round  pop- 
eyes  and  her  round  cheeks  to  be  made  up 
entirely  of  small  spheres  and  large  soft  ones. 

"  Oh,  but  it  is  too  late.  You  can  break  it." 
'  It's  at  four  o'clock." 

"  Then  we  have  time,  ducky." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    59 

'  It's  something  really  romantic,  you  see." 

'  The    young    are    always    lucky.'*      She 

rolled  her   eyes  in   sympathetic  admiration. 

'  This  will  be  the  fourth  night  this  week  that 

I   have   not    made   a   sou.  .  .  .   I'll   chuck 

myself  into  the  river  soon." 

Martin  felt  himself  softening  towards  her. 
He  slipped  a  twenty-franc  note  in  her  hand. 

"Oh,  you  are  too  good.  You  are  really 
galant  homme,  you." 

Martin  buried  his  face  in  his  hands,  dream-  l/ 
ing  of  the  woman  he  would  like  to  love  to 
night.  She  should  be  very  dark,  with  red  lips 
and  stained  cheeks,  like  Randolph's  girl ;  she 
should  have  small  breasts  and  slender,  dark, 
dancer's  thighs,  and  in  her  arms  he  could 
forget  everything  but  the  madness  and  the 
mystery  and  the  intricate  life  of  Paris  about 
them.  He  thought  of  Montmartre,  and 
Louise  in  the  opera  standing  at  her  window 
singing  the  madness  of  Paris.  .  .  . 

One  of  the  Australians  had  gone  away  with 
a  little  woman  in  a  pink  negligee.  The  other 
Australian  and  the  Englishman  were  standing 
unsteadily  near  the  table,  each  supported  by 
a  sleepy-looking  girl.  Leaving  the  fat  woman 
sadly  finishing  the  remains  of  the  chicken, 
large  tears  rolling  from  her  eyes,  they  left 
the  house  and  walked  for  a  long  time  down 
dark  streets,  three  men  and  two  women,  the 
Englishman  being  supported  in  the  middle, 
singing  in  a  desultory  fashion. 

They  stopped  under  a  broken  sign  of 
black  letters  on  greyish  glass,  within  which 
one  feeble  electric  light  bulb  made  a  red 


60     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

glow.  The  pavement  was  wet,  and  glimmered 
where  it  slanted  up  to  the  lamp-post  at  the 
next  corner. 

"  Here  we  are.  Come  along,  Janey,"  cried 
the  Australian  in  a  brisk  voice. 

The  door  opened  and  slammed  again. 
Martin  and  the  other  girl  stood  on  the 
pavement  facing  each  other.  The  English 
man  collapsed  on  the  doorstep,  and  began 
to  snore. 

"  Well,  there's  only  you  and  trie,"  she  said. 

"  Oh,  if  you  were  only  a  person,  instead  of 

being  a  member  of  a  profession "  said 

Martin  softly. 

"  Come,"  she  said. 

"  No,  dearie.     I  must  go,"  said  Martin. 

"  As  you  will.  I'll  take  care  of  your 
friend."  She  yawned. 

He  kissed  her  and  strode  down  the  dark 
street,  his  nostrils  full  of  the  smell  of  the  rouge 
on  her  lips. 

He  walked  a  long  while  with  his  hat  off, 
breathing  deep  of  the  sharp  night  air.  The 
streets  were  black  and  silent.  Intemperate 
desires  prowled  like  cats  in  the  darkness. 

He  woke  up  and  stretched  himself  stiffly, 
smelling  grass  and  damp  earth.  A  pearly 
lavender  mist  was  all  about  him,  through 
which  loomed  the  square  towers  of  Notre 
Dame  and  the  row  of  kings  across  the  f^ade 
and  the  sculpture  about  the  darkness  of  the 
doorways.  He  had  lain  down  on  his  back  on 
the  little  grass  plot  of  the  Parvis  Notre  Dame 
to  look  at  the  stars,  and  had  fallen  asleep. 

It   must   be   nearly   dawn.    Words   were 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    61 

droning  importunately  in  his  head.  "  The 
poor  beggar  said  '  Thank  you  '  with  a  funny 
German  accent  and  the  grenade  blew  him  to 
hell."  He  remembered  the  man  he  had  once 
helped  to  pick  up  in  whose  pocket  a  grenade 
had  exploded.  Before  that  he  had  not 
realised  that  torn  flesh  was  such  a  black-red, 
like  sausage  meat. 

"  Get  up,  you  can't  lie  there,"  cried  a 
gendarme. 

"  Notre  Dame  is  beautiful  in  the  morning," 
said  Martin,  stepping  across  the  low  rail  on  to 
the  pavement. 

"  Ah,  yes  ;   it  is  beautiful." 

Martin  Howe  sat  on  the  rail  of  the  bridge 
and  looked.  Before  him,  with  nothing  distinct 
yet  to  be  seen,  were  two  square  towers  and  the 
tracery  between  them  and  the  row  of  kings  on 
the  fa9ade,  and  the  long  series  of  flying 
buttresses  of  the  flank,  gleaming  through  the 
mist,  and,  barely  visible,  the  dark,  slender 
spire  soaring  above  the  crossing.  So  had  the 
abbey  in  the  forest  gleamed  tall  in  the  misty 
moonlight ;  like  mist,  only  drab  and  dense, 
the  dust  had  risen  above  the  tall  apse  as  the 
shells  tore  it  to  pieces. 

Amid  a  smell  of  new-roasted  coffee  he  sat 
at  a  table  and  watched  people  pass  briskly 
through  the  ruddy  sunlight.  Waiters  in 
shirt-sleeves  were  rubbing  off  the  other  tables 
and  putting  out  the  chairs.  He  sat  sipping 
coffee,  feeling  languid  and  nerveless.  After  a 
while  Tom  Randolph,  looking  very  young  and 
brown  with  his  hat  a  little  on  one  side,  came 
along.  With  him,  plainly  dressed  in  blue 


62     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

serge,  was  the  girl.  They  sat  down  and  she 
dropped  her  head  on  his  shoulder,  covering 
her  eyes  with  her  dark  lashes. 

"  Oh,  I  am  so  tired." 

"  Poor  child  !  You  must  go  home  and  go 
back  to  bed." 

"  But  I've  got  to  go  to  work." 

"  Poor  thing."  They  kissed  each  other 
tenderly  and  languidly. 

The  waiter  came  with  coffee  and  hot  milk 
and  little  crisp  loaves  of  bread. 

"  Oh,  Paris  is  wonderful  in  the  early 
morning  !  "  said  Martin. 

"  Indeed  it  is.  ...  Good-bye,  little  girl, 
if  you  must  go.  We'll  see  each  other  again." 

'  You  must  call  me  Yvonne."  She  pouted 
a  little. 

"  All  right,  Yvonne."  He  got  to  his  feet 
and  pressed  her  two  hands. 

"  Well,  what  sort  of  a  time  did  you  have, 
Howe  ? " 

"  Curious.  I  lost  our  friends  one  by  one, 
left  two  women  and  slept  a  little  while  on  the 
grass  in  front  of  Notre  Dame.  That  was  my 
real  love  of  the  night." 

"  My  girl  was  charming.  .  .  .  Honestly,  I'd 
marry  her  in  a  minute."  He  laughed  a 
merry  laugh. 

"  Let's  take  a  cab  somewhere." 

They  climbed  into  a  victoria  and  told  the 
driver  to  go  to  the  Madeleine. 

"  Look,  before  I  do  anything  else  I  must  go 
to  the  hotel." 

"  Why  ?  " 

"  Preventives." 

"  Of  course;  you'd  better  go  at  once." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    63 

The  cab  rattled  merrily  along  the  streets 
where  the  early  sunshine  cast  rusty  patches  on 
the  grey  houses  and  on  the  thronged  fantastic 
chimney-pots  that  rose  in  clusters  and  hedges 
from  the  mansard  roofs. 


THE  lamp  in  the  hut  of  the  road 
control  casts  an  oblong  of  light  on 
the  white  wall  opposite.  The 
patch  of  light  is  constantly  crossed  and 
scalloped  and  obscured  by  shadows  of  rifles 
and  helmets  and  packs  of  men  passing.  Now 
and  then  the  shadow  of  a  single  man,  a  nose 
and  a  chin  under  a  helmet,  a  head  bent 
forward  with  the  weight  of  the  pack,  or  a 
pack  alone  beside  which  slants  a  rifle,  shows 
up  huge  and  fantastic  with  its  loaf  of  bread 
and  its  pair  of  shoes  and  its  pots  and 
pans. 

Then  with  a  jingle  of  harness  and  clank  of 
steel,  train  after  train  of  artillery  comes  up 
out  of  the  darkness  of  the  road,  is  thrown  by 
the  lamp  into  vivid  relief  and  is  swallowed 
again  by  the  blackness  of  the  village  street, 
short  bodies  of  seventy-fives  sticking  like 
ducks'  tails  from  between  their  large  wheels ; 
caisson  after  caisson  of  ammunition,  huge 
waggons  hooded  and  unhooded,  filled  with  a 
chaos  of  equipment  that  catches  fantastic 
lights  and  throws  huge  muddled  shadows  on 
the  white  wall  of  the  house. 

"  Put  that  light  out.  Name  of  God,  do  you 
want  to  have  them  start  chucking  shells  into 
here  ?  "  comes  a  voice  shrill  with  anger.  The 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    65 

brisk  trot  of  the  officer's  horse  is  lost  in  the 
clangour. 

The  door  of  the  hut  slams  to  and  only  a 
thin  ray  of  orange  light  penetrates  into  the 
blackness  of  the  road,  where  with  jingle  of 
harness  and  clatter  of  iron  and  tramp  of 
hoofs,  gun  after  gun,  caisson  after  caisson, 
waggon  after  waggon  files  by.  Now  and  then 
the  passing  stops  entirely  and  matches  flare 
where  men  light  pipes  and  cigarettes.  Coming 
from  the  other  direction  with  throbbing  of 
motors,  a  convoy  of  camions,  huge  black 
oblongs,  grinds  down  the  other  side  of  the 
road.  Horses  rear  and  there  are  shouts  and 
curses  and  clacking  of  reins  in  the  dark 
ness. 

Far  away  where  the  lowering  clouds  meet 
the  hills  beyond  the  village  a  white  glare 
grows  and  fades  again  at  intervals  :  star- 
shells. 

"  There's  a  most  tremendous  concentration 
of  sanitary  sections." 

"  You  bet ;  two  American  sections  and  a 
French  one  in  this  village  ;  three  more  down 
the  road.  Something's  up." 

'  There's  goin'  to  be  an  attack  at  St.  Mihiel, 
a  Frenchman  told  me." 

"  I  heard  that  the  Germans  were  con 
centrating  for  an  offensive  in  the  Four  de 
Paris." 

"  Damned  unlikely." 

"  Anyway,  this  is  the  third  week  we've  been 
in  this  bloody  hole  with  our  feet  in  the 
mud." 

"  They've  got  us  quartered  in  a  barn  with  a 

E 


66     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

regular  brook  flowing  through  the  middle  of 
it." 

"  The  main  thing  about  this  damned  war  is 
ennui — just  plain  boredom." 

"  Not  forgetting  the  mud." 

Three  ambulance  drivers  in  slickers  were 
on  the  front  seat  of  a  car.  The  rain  fell  in 
perpendicular  sheets,  pattering  on  the  roof  of 
the  car  and  on  the  puddles  that  filled  the 
village  street.  Streaming  with  water,  black 
ened  walls  of  ruined  houses  rose  opposite 
them  above  a  rank  growth  of  weeds.  Beyond 
were  rain- veiled  hills.  Every  little  while, 
slithering  through  the  rain,  splashing  mud  to 
the  right  and  left,  a  convoy  of  camions  went 
by  and  disappeared,  truck  after  truck,  in  the 
white  streaming  rain. 

Inside  the  car  Tom  Randolph  was  playing 
an  accordion,  letting  strange  nostalgic  little 
songs  filter  out  amid  the  hard  patter  of  the 
rain. 

"  Oh,  I's  been  workin'  on  de  railroad 

All  de  livelong  day  ; 
I's  been  workin'  on  de  railroad 
Jus'  to  pass  de  time  away." 

The  men  on  the  front  seat  leaned  back  and 
shook  the  water  off  their  knees  and  hummed 
the  song. 

The  accordion  had  stopped.  Tom  Randolph 
was  lying  on  his  back  on  the  floor  of  the  car 
with  his  arm  over  his  eyes.  The  rain  fell 
endlessly,  rattling  on  the  roof  of  the  car, 
dancing  silver  in  the  coffee-coloured  puddles 
of  the  road.  Their  boredom  fell  into  the 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    67 

rhythm  of  crooning  self-pity  of  the  old  coon 
song  : 

"  I's  been  workin'  on  de  railroad 

All  de  livelong  day  ; 
I's  been  workin'  on  de  railroad 
Jus'  to  pass  de  time  away." 

"  Oh,  God,  something's  got  to  happen 
soon." 

Lost  in  rubber  boots,  and  a  huge  gleaming 
slicker  and  hood,  the  section  leader  splashed 
across  the  road. 

"  All  cars  must  be  ready  to  leave  at  six 
to-night." 

'  Yay.    Where  we  goin'  ?  " 

"  Orders  haven't  come  yet.  We're  to  be  in 
readiness  to  leave  at  six  to-night.  ..." 

"  I  tell  you,  fellers,  there's  goin'  to  be  an 
attack.  This  concentration  of  sanitary  sec 
tions  means  something.  You  can't  tell 
me  .  .  ." 

"  They  say  they  have  beer,"  said  the 
aspirant  behind  Martin  in  the  long  line  of 
men  who  waited  in  the  hot  sun  for  the  cope 
to  open,  while  the  dust  the  staff  cars  and 
camions  raised  as  they  whirred  by  on  the  road 
settled  in  a  blanket  over  the  village. 

"  Cold  beer  ?  " 

"  Of  course  not,"  said  the  aspirant,  laughing 
so  that  all  the  brilliant  ivory  teeth  showed 
behind  his  red  lips.  "It'll  be  detestable. 
I'm  getting  it  because  it's  rare,  for  senti 
mental  reasons." 

Martin  laughed,  looking  in  the  man's 
brown  face,  a  face  in  which  all  past  ex 
pressions  seemed  to  linger  in  the  fine  lines 


68     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

about  the  mouth  and  eyes  and  in  the  modelling 
of  the  cheeks  and  temples. 

"  You  don't  understand  that,"  said  the 
aspirant  again. 

"  Indeed  I  do." 

Later  they  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  stone  well 
head  in  the  courtyard  behind  the  store, 
drinking  warm  beer  out  of  tin  cups  blackened 
by  wine,  and  staring  at  a  tall  barn  that  had 
crumpled  at  one  end  so  that  it  looked,  with 
its  two  frightened  little  square  windows,  like 
a  cow  kneeling  down. 

"Is  it  true  that  the  ninety-second's  going 
up  to  the  lines  to-night  ?  JI 

"  Yes,  we're  going  up  to  make  a  little 
attack.  Probably  I'll  come  back  in  your 
little  omnibus." 

"  I  hope  you  won't." 

"  I'd  be  very  glad  to.  A  lucky  wound  ! 
But  I'll  probably  be  killed.  This  is  the  first 
time  I've  gone  up  to  the  front  that  I  didn't 
expect  to  be  killed.  So  it'll  probably 
happen." 

Martin  Howe  could  not  help  looking  at  him 
suddenly.  The  aspirant  sat  at  ease  on  the 
stone  margin  of  the  well,  leaning  against  the 
wrought  iron  support  for  the  bucket,  one 
knee  clasped  in  his  strong,  heavily- veined 
hands.  Dead  he  would  be  different.  Martin's 
mind  could  hardly  grasp  the  connection 
between  this  man  full  of  latent  energies,  full 
of  thoughts  and  desires,  this  man  whose 
shoulder  he  would  have  liked  to  have  put  his 
arm  round  from  friendliness,  with  whom  he 
would  have  liked  to  go  for  long  walks,  with 
whom  he  would  have  liked  to  sit  long  into  the 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    69 

night  drinking  and  talking — and  those 
huddled,  pulpy  masses  of  blue  uniform  half- 
buried  in  the  mud  of  ditches. 

"  Have  you  ever  seen  a  herd  of  cattle  being 
driven  to  abattoir  on  a  fine  May  morning  ?  " 
asked  the  aspirant  in  a  scornful,  jaunty  tone, 
as  if  he  had  guessed  Martin's  thoughts. 

"  I  wonder  what  they  think  of  it.'' 

'  It's  not  that  I'm  resigned.  .  .  .  Don't 
think  that.  Resignation  is  too  easy.  That's 
why  the  herd  can  be  driven  by  a  boy  of  six 
...  or  a  prime  minister  !  " 

Martin  was  sitting  with  his  arms  crossed. 
The  fingers  of  one  hand  were  squeezing  the 
muscle  of  his  forearm.  It  gave  him  pleasure 
to  feel  the  smooth,  firm  modelling  of  his  arm 
through  his  sleeve.  And  how  would  that  feel 
when  it  was  dead,  when  a  steel  splinter  had 
slithered  through  it  ?  A  momentary  stench 
of  putrefaction  filled  his  nostrils,  making  his 
stomach  contract  with  nausea. 

"  I'm  not  resigned  either,"  he  shouted  in  a 
laugh.  "  I  am  going  to  do  something  some 
day,  but  first  I  must  see.  I  want  to  be 
initiated  in  all  the  circles  of  hell." 

"  I'd  play  the  part  of  Virgil  pretty  well," 
said  the  aspirant,  "  but  I  suppose  Virgil  was  a 
staff  officer." 

"  I  must  go,"  said  Martin.  "  My  name's 
Martin  Howe,  S.S.U.  84." 

"  Oh  yes,  you  are  quartered  in  the  square. 
My  name  is  Merrier.  You'll  probably  carry 
me  back  in  your  little  omnibus." 

When  Howe  got  back  to  where  the  cars 
were  packed  in  a  row  in  the  village  square, 


70     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

Randolph  came  up  to  him  and  whispered  in 
his  ear: 

"D.J.'s  to-morrow." 

'  What's  that  ?  " 

'  The  attack.  It's  to-morrow  at  three  in 
the  morning  ;  instructions  are  going  to  be 
given  out  to-night." 

A  detonation  behind  them  was  like  a  blow 
on  the  head,  making  their  ear-drums  ring. 
The  glass  in  the  headlight  of  one  of  the  cars 
tinkled  to  the  ground. 

'  The  410  behind  the  church,  that  was. 
Pretty  near  knocks  the  wind  out  of  you." 

"  Say,  Randolph,  have  you  heard  the  new 
orders  ?  " 

"  No." 

A  tall,  fair-haired  man  came  out  from  the 
front  of  his  car  where  he  had  been  working  on 
the  motor,  holding  his  grease-covered  hands 
away  from  him. 

"  It's  put  off,"  he  said,  lowering  his  voice 
mysteriously.  "  D.J.'s  not  till  day  after 
to-morrow  at  four-twenty.  But  to-morrow 
we're  going  up  to  relieve  the  section  that's 
coming  out  and  take  over  the  posts.  They 
say  it's  hell  up  there.  The  Germans  have  a 
new  gas  that  you  can't  smell  at  all.  The 
other  section's  got  about  five  men  gassed,  and 
a  bunch  of  them  have  broken  down.  The 
posts  are  shelled  all  the  time." 

"  Great,"  said  Tom  Randolph.  '  We'll  see 
the  real  thing  this  time." 

There  was  a  whistling  shriek  overhead  and 
all  three  of  them  fell  in  a  heap  on  the  ground 
in  front  of  the  car.  There  was  a  crash  that 
echoed  amid  the  house-walls,  and  a  pillar  of 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    71 

black  smoke  stood  like  a  cypress  tree  at  the 
other  end  of  the  village  street. 

'  Talk  about  the  real  thing  !  "  said  Martin. 

"  Ole  410  evidently  woke  'em  up  some." 

It  was  the  fifth  time  that  day  that  Martin's 
car  had  passed  the  cross-roads  where  the 
calvary  was.  Someone  had  propped  up  the 
fallen  crucifix  so  that  it  tilted  dark  despairing 
arms  against  the  sunset  sky  where  the  sun 
gleamed  like  a  huge  copper  kettle  lost  in  its 
own  steam.  The  rain  made  bright  yellowish 
stripes  across  the  sky  and  dripped  from  the 
cracked  feet  of  the  old  wooden  Christ,  whose 
gaunt,  scarred  figure  hung  out  from  the  tilted 
cross,  swaying  a  little  under  the  beating  of  the 
rain.  Martin  was  wiping  the  mud  from  his 
hands  after  changing  a  wheel.  He  stared 
curiously  at  the  fallen  jowl  and  the  cavernous 
eyes  that  had  meant  for  some  country  sculptor 
ages  ago  the  utter est  agony  of  pain.  Suddenly 
he  noticed  that  where  the  crown  of  thorns 
had  been  about  the  forehead  of  the  Christ 
someone  had  wound  barbed  wire.  He  smiled, 
and  asked  the  swaying  figure  in  his  mind : 

"  And  You,  what  do  You  think  of  it  ?  " 

For  an  instant  he  could  feel  wire  barbs 
ripping  through  his  own  flesh. 

He  leaned  over  to  crank  the  car. 

The  road  was  filled  suddenly  with  the  tramp 
and  splash  of  troops  marching,  their  wet 
helmets  and  their  rifles  gleaming  in  the 
coppery  sunset.  Even  through  the  clean  rain 
came  the  smell  of  filth  and  sweat  and  misery 
of  troops  marching.  The  faces  under  the 
helmets  were  strained  and  colourless  and 


72     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

cadaverous  from  the  weight  of  the  equipment 
on  their  necks  and  their  backs  and  their 
thighs.  The  faces  drooped  under  the  helmets, 
tilted  to  one  side  or  the  other,  distorted  and 
wooden  like  the  face  of  the  figure  that  dangled 
from  the  cross. 

Above  the  splash  of  feet  through  mud  and 
the  jingle  of  equipment,  came  occasionally  the 
ping,  ping  of  shrapnel  bursting  at  the  next 
cross-roads  at  the  edge  of  the  woods. 

Martin  sat  in  the  car  with  the  motor  racing, 
waiting  for  the  end  of  the  column. 

One  of  the  stragglers  who  floundered  along 
through  the  churned  mud  of  the  road  after 
the  regular  ranks  had  passed  stopped  still 
and  looked  up  at  the  tilted  cross.  From  the 
next  cross-roads  came,  at  intervals,  the  sharp 
twanging  ping  of  shrapnel  bursting. 

The  straggler  suddenly  began  kicking  feebly 
at  the  prop  of  the  cross  with  his  foot,  and  then 
dragged  himself  off  after  the  column.  The 
cross  fell  forward  with  a  dull  splintering 
splash  into  the  mud  of  the  road. 

The  road  went  down  the  hill  in  long  zig 
zags,  through  a  village  at  the  bottom  where 
out  of  the  mist  that  steamed  from  the  little 
river  a  spire  with  a  bent  weathercock  rose 
above  the  broken  roof  of  the  church,  then  up 
the  hill  again  into  the  woods.  In  the  woods 
the  road  stretched  green  and  gold  in  the  first 
horizontal  sunlight.  Among  the  thick  trees, 
roofs  covered  with  branches,  were  rows  of 
long  portable  barracks  with  doors  decorated 
with  rustic  work.  At  one  place  a  sign 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    73 

announced  in  letters  made  of  wattled  sticks, 
Camp  des  Pommiers. 

A  few  birds  sang  in  the  woods,  and  at  a 
pump  they  passed  a  lot  of  men  stripped  to  the 
waist  who  were  leaning  over  washing,  laughing 
and  splashing  in  the  sunlight.  Every  now 
and  then,  distant,  metallic,  the  pong,  pong, 
pong  of  a  battery  of  seventy-fives  resounded 
through  the  rustling  trees. 

"  Looks  like  a  camp  meetin'  ground  in 
Georgia/'  said  Tom  Randolph,  blowing  his 
whistle  to  make  two  men  carrying  a  large 
steaming  pot  on  a  pole  between  them  get  out 
of  the  way. 

The  road  became  muddier  as  they  went 
deeper  into  the  woods,  and,  turning  into  a 
cross-road,  the  car  began  slithering,  skidding 
a  little  at  the  turns,  through  thick  soupy  mud. 
On  either  side  the  woods  became  broken  and 
jagged,  stumps  and  split  boughs  littering  the 
ground,  trees  snapped  off  halfway  up.  In 
the  air  there  was  a  scent  of  newly-split 
timber  and  of  turned-up  woodland  earth,  and 
among  them  a  sweetish  rough  smell. 

Covered  with  greenish  mud,  splashing  the 
mud  right  and  left  with  their  great  flat 
wheels,  camions  began  passing  them  returning 
from  the  direction  of  the  lines. 

At  last  at  a  small  red  cross  flag  they  stopped 
and  ran  the  car  into  a  grove  of  tall  chestnuts, 
where  they  parked  it  beside  another  car  of 
their  section  and  lay  down  among  the  crisp 
leaves,  listening  to  occasional  shells  whining 
far  overhead.  All  through  the  wood  was  a 
continuous  ping,  pong,  ping  of  batteries,  with 


74     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

the  crash  of  a  big  gun  coming  now  and 
then  like  the  growl  of  a  bull-frog  among 
the  sing-song  of  small  toads  in  a  pond  at 
night. 

Through  the  trees  from  where  they  lay 
they  could  see  the  close-packed  wooden  crosses 
of  a  cemetery  from  which  came  a  sound  of 
spaded  earth,  and  where,  preceded  by  a 
priest  in  a  muddy  cassock,  little  two-wheeled 
carts  piled  with  shapeless  things  in  sacks  kept 
being  brought  up  and  unloaded  and  dragged 
away  again. 

Showing  alternately  dark  and  light  in  the 
sun  and  shadow  of  the  woodland  road,  a  cook 
waggon,  short  chimney  giving  out  blue  smoke, 
and  cauldrons  steaming,  clatters  ahead  of 
Martin  and  Randolph;  the  backs  of  two 
men  in  heavy  blue  coats,  their  helmets 
showing  above  the  narrow  driver's  seat.  On 
either  side  of  the  road  short  yellow  flames 
keep  spitting  up,  slanting  from  hidden  guns 
amid  a  pandemonium  of  noise. 

Up  the  road  a  sudden  column  of  black 
smoke  rises  among  falling  trees.  A  louder 
explosion  and  the  cook  waggon  in  front  of 
them  vanishes  in  a  new  whirl  of  thick  smoke. 
Accelerator  pressed  down,  the  car  plunges 
along  the  rutted  road,  tips,  and  a  wheel  sinks 
in  the  new  shell-hole.  The  hind  wheels  spin 
for  a  moment,  spattering  gravel  about,  and 
just  as  another  roar  comes  behind  them,  bite 
into  the  road  again  and  the  car  goes  on, 
speeding  through  the  alternate  sun  and 
shadow  of  the  woods.  Martin  remembers  the 
beating  legs  of  a  mule  rolling  on  its  back  on 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    75 

the  side  of  the  road  and,  steaming  in  the 
fresh  morning  air,  the  purple  and  yellow  and 
red  of  its  ripped  belly. 

"  Did  you  get  the  smell  of  almonds  ?  I  sort 
of  like  it,"  says  Randolph,  drawing  a  long 
breath  as  the  car  slowed  down  again. 

The  woods  at  night,  fantastic  blackness 
full  of  noise  and  yellow  leaping  flames  from 
the  mouths  of  guns.  Now  and  then  the 
sulphurous  flash  of  a  shell  explosion  and  the 
sound  of  trees  falling  and  shell  fragments 
swishing  through  the  air.  At  intervals  over 
a  little  knoll  in  the  direction  of  the  trenches,  a 
white  star-shell  falls  slowly,  making  the  trees 
and  the  guns  among  their  tangle  of  hiding 
branches  cast  long  green-black  shadows, 
drowning  the  wood  in  a  strange  glare  of 
desolation. 

"  Where  the  devil's  the  abri  ?  " 

Everything  drowned  in  the  detonations  of 
three  guns,  one  after  the  other,  so  near  as  to 
puff  hot  air  in  their  faces  in  the  midst  of  the 
blinding  concussion. 

"  Look,  Tom,  this  is  foolish ;  the  abri's 
right  here." 

"  I  haven't  got  it  in  my  pocket,  Howe. 
Damn  those  guns." 

Again  everything  is  crushed  in  the  con 
cussion  of  the  guns. 

They  throw  themselves  on  the  ground  as  a 
shell  shrieks  and  explodes.  There  is  a 
moment's  pause,  and  gravel  and  bits  of  bark 
tumble  about  their  heads. 

"  We've  got  to  find  that  abri.  I  wish  I 
hadn't  lost  my  flashlight." 


76     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

"  Here  it  is  !  No,  that  stinks  too  much. 
Must  be  the  latrine." 

"  Say,  Tom." 

"  Here." 

"  Damn,  I  ran  into  a  tree.     I  found  it." 

"  All  right.    Coming." 

Martin  held  out  his  hand  until  Randolph 
bumped  into  it ;  then  they  stumbled  together 
down  the  rough  wooden  steps,  pulled  aside 
the  blanket  that  served  to  keep  the  light  in, 
and  found  themselves  blinking  in  the  low 
tunnel  of  the  abri. 

Brancardiers  were  asleep  in  the  two  tiers  of 
bunks  that  filled  up  the  sides,  and  at  the  table 
at  the  end  a  lieutenant  of  the  medical  corps 
was  writing  by  the  light  of  a  smoky  lamp. 

'  They  are  landing  some  round  here  to 
night,"  he  said,  pointing  out  two  unoccupied 
bunks.  "  I'll  call  you  when  we  need  a  car." 

As  he  spoke,  in  succession  the  three  big  guns 
went  off.  The  concussion  put  the  lamp  out. 

"  Damn,"  said  Tom  Randolph. 

The  lieutenant  swore  and  struck  a  match. 

'  The  red  light  of  the  poste  de  secours  is 
out,  too,"  said  Martin. 

"  No  use  lighting  it  again  with  those  unholy 
mortars.  .  .  .  It's  idiotic  to  put  a  poste  de 
secours  in  the  middle  of  a  battery  like  this." 

The  Americans  lay  down  to  try  to  sleep. 
Shell  after  shell  exploded  round  the  dugout, 
but  regularly  every  few  minutes  came  the 
hammer  blows  of  the  mortars,  half  the  time 
putting  the  light  out. 

A  shell  explosion  seemed  to  split  the  dugout 
and  a  piece  of  eclat  whizzed  through  the 
blanket  that  curtained  off  the  door.  Someone 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    77 

tried  to  pick  it  up  as  it  lay  half-buried  in  the 
board  floor,  and  pulled  his  fingers  away 
quickly,  blowing  on  them.  The  men  turned 
over  in  the  bunks  and  laughed,  and  a  smile 
came  over  the  drawn  green  face  of  a  wounded 
man  who  sat  very  quiet  behind  the  lieutenant, 
staring  at  the  smoky  flame  of  the  lamp. 

The  curtain  was  pulled  aside  and  a  man 
staggered  in  holding  with  the  other  hand  a 
limp  arm  twisted  in  a  mud-covered  sleeve, 
from  which  blood  and  mud  dripped  on  to  the 
floor. 

"  Hello,  old  chap,"  said  the  doctor  quietly. 
A  smell  of  disinfectant  stole  through  the 
dugout. 

Faint  above  the  incessant  throbbing  of 
explosions,  the  sound  of  a  claxon  horn. 

"  Ha,  gas,"  said  the  doctor.  "  Put  on  your 
masks,  children."  A  man  went  along  the 
dugout  waking  those  who  were  asleep  and 
giving  out  fresh  masks.  Someone  stood  in  the 
doorway  blowing  a  shrill  whistle,  then  there 
was  again  the  clamour  of  a  claxon  near  at 
hand. 

The  band  of  the  gas  mask  was  tight  about 
Martin's  forehead,  biting  into  the  skin. 

He  and  Randolph  sat  side  by  side  on  the 
edge  of  the  bunk,  looking  out  through  the 
crinkled  isinglass  eyepieces  at  the  men  in  the 
dugout,  most  of  whom  had  gone  to  sleep  again. 

"  God,  I  envy  a  man  who  can  snore  through 
a  gas-mask,"  said  Randolph. 

Men's  heads  had  a  ghoulish  look,  strange 
large  eyes  and  grey  oilcloth  flaps  instead  of 
faces 

Outside  the  constant  explosions  had  given 


78     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

place  to  a  series  of  swishing  whistles,  merging 
together  into  a  sound  as  of  water  falling,  only 
less  regular,  more  sibilant.  Occasionally 
there  was  the  rending  burst  of  a  shell,  and  at 
intervals  came  the  swinging  detonations  of 
the  three  guns.  In  the  dugout,  except  for 
two  men  who  snored  loudly,  raspingly,  every 
one  was  quiet. 

Several  stretchers  with  wounded  men  on 
them  were  brought  in  and  laid  in  the  end  of 
the  dugout. 

Gradually,  as  the  bombardment  continued, 
men  began  sliding  into  the  dugout,  crowding 
together,  touching  each  other  for  company, 
speaking  in  low  voices  through  their  masks. 

"  A  mask,  in  the  name  of  God,  a  mask  !  "  a 
voice  shouted,  breaking  into  a  squeal,  and  an 
unshaven  man,  with  mud  caked  in  his  hair 
and  beard,  burst  through  the  curtain.  His 
eyelids  kept  up  a  continual  trembling  and  the 
water  streamed  down  both  sides  of  his  nose. 

"  O  God,"  he  kept  talking  in  a  rasping 
whisper,  "  O  God,  they're  all  killed.  There 
were  six  mules  on  my  waggon  and  a  shell 
killed  them  all  and  threw  me  into  the  ditch. 
You  can't  find  the  road  any  more.  They're 
all  killed." 

An  orderly  was  wiping  his  face  as  if  it  were 
a  child's. 

"  They're  all  killed  and  I  lost  my  mask. 
.  .  .  O  God,  this  gas  .  .  ." 

The  doctor,  a  short  man,  looking  like  a 
gnome  in  his  mask  with  its  wheezing  rubber 
nosepiece,  was  walking  up  and  down  with 
short,  slow  steps. 

Suddenly,  as  three  soldiers  came  in,  drawing 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917     79 

the  curtain  aside,  he  shouted  in  a  shrill, 
high-pitched  voice  : 

"  Keep  the  curtain  closed  !  Do  you  want 
to  asphyxiate  us  ?  " 

He  strode  up  to  the  newcomers,  his  voice 
strident  like  an  angry  woman's.  "  What  are 
you  doing  here  ?  This  is  the  poste  de  secours. 
Are  you  wounded  ?  " 

"  But,  my  lieutenant,  we  can't  stay  out 
side  .  .  ." 

'  Where's  your  own  cantonment  ?  You 
can't  stay  here ;  you  can't  stay  here,"  he 
shrieked. 

"  But,  my  lieutenant,  our  dugout's  been  hit." 

'  You  can't  stay  here.    You  can't  stay 
here.    There's    not    enough    room    for    the 
wounded.    Name  of  God  !  " 
'  But,  my  lieutenant  ..." 

"  Get  the  hell  out  of  here,  d'you  hear  ?  " 

The  men  began  stumbling  out  into  the 
darkness,  tightening  the  adjustments  of  their 
masks  behind  their  heads. 

The  guns  had  stopped  firing.  There  was 
nothing  but  the  constant  swishing  and 
whistling  of  gas-shells,  like  endless  pails  of 
dirty  water  being  thrown  on  gravel. 

"  We've  been  at  it  three  hours,"  whispered 
Martin  to  Tom  Randolph. 

"  God,  suppose  these  masks  need  changing." 

The  sweat  from  Martin's  face  steamed  in 
the  eyepieces,  blinding  him. 

"  Any  more  masks  ?  "  he  asked. 

A  brancardier  handed  him  one.  '  There 
aren't  any  more  in  the  abri." 

"  I  have  some  more  in  the  car,"  said 
Martin. 


8o     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  I'll  get  one,"  cried  Randolph,  getting  to 
his  feet. 

They  started  out  of  the  door  together.  In 
the  light  that  streamed  out  as  they  drew  the  flap 
aside  they  saw  a  tree  opposite  them.  A  shell 
exploded,  it  seemed,  right  on  top  of  them  ;  the 
tree  rose  and  bowed  towards  them  and  fell. 

"  Are  you  all  there,  Tom  ?  '  whispered 
Martin,  his  ears  ringing. 

"  Bet  your  life." 

Someone  pulled  them  back  into  the  abri. 
"  Here  ;  we've  found  another." 

Martin  lay  down  on  the  bunk  again, 
drawing  with  difficulty  each  breath.  His  lips 
had  a  wet,  decomposed  feeling. 

At  the  wrist  of  the  arm  he  rested  his  head 
on,  the  watch  ticked  comfortably. 

He  began  to  think  how  ridiculous  it  would 
be  if  he,  Martin  Howe,  should  be  extinguished 
like  this.  The  gas-mask  might  be  defective. 

God,  it  would  be  silly. 

Outside  the  gas-shells  were  still  coming  in. 
The  lamp  showed  through  a  faint  bluish  haze. 
Everyone  was  still  waiting. 

Another  hour. 

Martin  began  to  recite  to  himself  the  only 
thing  he  could  remember,  over  and  over  again 
in  time  to  the  ticking  of  his  watch. 

"  Ah,  sunflower,  weary  of  time. 
Ah,  sunflower,  weary  of  time, 
Who  countest  the  steps  of  the  sun  ; 
Ah,  sunflower,  weary  of  time, 
Who  countest  ..." 

"  One,  two,  three,  four,"  he  counted  the 
shells  outside  exploding  at  irregular  intervals. 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION-i9i7    81 

There  were  periods  of  absolute  silence, 
when  he  could  hear  batteries  pong,  pong,  pong 
in  the  distance. 

He  began  again . 

"  Ah,  sunflower,  weary  of  time, 

Who  countest  the  steps  of  the  sun 
In  search  of  that  far  golden  clime 

Where  the  traveller's  journey  is  done. 

"  Where  the  youth  pined  away  with  desire 
And  the  pale  virgin  shrouded  in  snow 
A  rise  from  their  graves  and  aspire 
Where  my  sunflower  wishes  to  go." 

Whang,  whang,  whang  ;  the  battery  along 
side  began  again,  sending  out  the  light. 
Someone  pulled  the  blanket  aside.  A  little 
leprous  greyness  filtered  into  the  dugout. 

"  Ah,  it's  getting  light." 

The  doctor  went  out  and  they  could  hear 
his  steps  climbing  up  to  the  level  of  the 
ground. 

Howe  saw  a  man  take  his  mask  off  and  spit. 

"  Oh,  God,  a  cigarette  !  "  Tom  Randolph 
cried,  pulling  his  mask  off.  The  air  of  the 
woods  was  fresh  and  cool  outside.  Every 
thing  was  lost  in  mist  that  filled  the  shell- 
holes  as  with  water  and  wreathed  itself 
fantastically  about  the  shattered  trunks  of 
trees.  Here  and  there  was  still  a  little 
greenish  haze  of  gas.  It  cut  their  throats  and 
made  their  eyes  run  as  they  breathed  in  the 
cool  air  of  the  dawn. 

Dawn  in  a  wilderness  of  jagged  stumps  and 
ploughed  earth  ;  against  the  yellow  sky,  the 

F 


82     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

yellow  glare  of  guns  that  squat  like  toads  in  a 
tangle  of  wire  and  piles  of  brass  shell-cases  and 
split  wooden  boxes.  Long  rutted  roads  lit 
tered  with  shell-cases  stretching  through  the 
wrecked  woods  in  the  yellow  light ;  strung 
alongside  of  them,  tangled  masses  of  telephone 
wires.  Torn  camouflage  fluttering  greenish- 
grey  against  the  ardent  yellow  sky,  and 
twining  among  the  fantastic  black  leafless 
trees,  the  greenish  wraiths  of  gas.  Along  the 
roads  camions  overturned,  dead  mules  tangled 
in  their  traces  beside  shattered  caissons, 
huddled  bodies  in  long  blue  coats  half  buried 
in  the  mud  of  the  ditches. 

"  We've  got  to  pass.  .  .  .  We've  got  five 
very  bad  cases." 

'  Impossible." 

"  We've  got  to  pass.  .  .  .  Sacred  name  of 
God ! " 

"  But  it  is  impossible.  Two  camions  are 
blocked  across  the  road  and  there  are  three 
batteries  of  seventy-fives  waiting  to  get  up 
the  road." 

Long  lines  of  men  on  horseback  with  gas 
masks  on,  a  rearing  of  frightened  horses  and 
jingle  of  harness. 

"  Talk  to  'em,  Howe,  for  God's  sake  ;  we've 
got  to  get  past." 

'  I'm  doing  the  best  I  can,  Tom." 

"  Well,  make  'em  look  lively.  Damn  this 
gas  !  " 

"  Put  your  masks  on  again ;  you  can't 
breathe  without  them  in  this  hollow." 

"  Hay  !  ye  God-damn  sons  of  bitches,  get 
out  of  the  way." 

"  But  they  can't." 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    83 

"  Oh,  hell,  I'll  go  talk  to  'em.  You  take 
the  wheel." 

"  No,  sit  still  and  don't  get  excited." 
'  You're  the  one's  getting  excited." 
'  Damn  this  gas." 

"  My  lieutenant,  I  beg  you  to  move  the 
horses  to  the  side  of  the  road.  I  have  five 
very  badly  wounded  men.  They  will  die  in 
this  gas.  I've  got  to  get  by." 

"  God  damn  him,  tell  him  to  hurry." 
"  Shut  up,  Tom,  for  God's  sake." 
'  They're  moving.     I  can't  see  a  thing  in 
this  mask." 

"  Hah,  that  did  for  the  two  back  horses." 
"  Halt !     Is  there  any  room  in  the  am 
bulance  ?     One  of  my  men's  just  got  his  thigh 
ripped  up." 

"  No  room,  no  room." 
"  He'll  have  to  go  to  a  poste  de  secours." 
The  fresh  air  blowing  hard  in  their  faces 
and  the  woods  getting  greener  on  either  side, 
full  of  ferns  and  small  plants  that  half  cover 
the  strands  of  barbed  wire  and  the  rows  of 
shells. 

At  the  end  of  the  woods  the  sun  rises  golden 
into  a  cloudless  sky,  and  on  the  grassy  slope 
of  the  valley  sheep  and  a  herd  of  little  donkeys 
are  feeding,  looking  up  with  quietly  moving 
jaws  as  the  ambulance,  smelling  of  blood  and 
filthy  sweat-soaked  clothes,  rattles  by. 

Black  night.  All  through  the  woods  along 
the  road  squatting  mortars  spit  yellow  flame. 
Constant  throbbing  of  detonations. 

Martin,  inside  the  ambulance,  is  holding 
together  a  broken  stretcher,  while  the  car 


84     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

jolts  slowly  along.  It  is  pitch  dark  in  the  car, 
except  when  the  glare  of  a  gun  from  near  the 
road  gives  him  a  momentary  view  of  the 
man's  head,  a  mass  of  bandages  from  the 
middle  of  which  a  little  bit  of  blood-soaked 
beard  sticks  out,  and  of  his  lean  body  tossing 
on  the  stretcher  with  every  jolt  of  the  car. 
Martin  is  kneeling  on  the  floor  of  the  car,  his 
knees  bruised  by  the  jolting,  holding  the  man 
on  the  stretcher,  with  his  chest  pressed  on  the 
man's  chest  and  one  arm  stretched  down  to 
keep  the  limp  bandaged  leg  still. 

The  man's  breath  comes  with  a  bubbling 
sound,  now  and  then  mingling  with  an  articu 
late  groan. 

"  Softly.  ...  Oh,  softly,  oh— oh— oh!  " 

"  Slow  as  you  can,  Tom,  old  man,"  Martin 
calls  out  above  the  pandemonium  of  firing  on 
both  sides  of  the  road,  tightening  the  muscles 
of  his  arm  in  a  desperate  effort  to  keep  the 
limp  leg  from  bouncing.  The  smell  of  blood 
and  filth  is  misery  in  his  nostrils. 

"Softly.  .  .  .  Softly.  .  .  .  Oh—oh— oh!  " 
The  groan  is  barely  heard  amid  the  bubbling 
breath. 

Pitch  dark  in  the  car.  Martin,  his  every 
muscle  taut  with  the  agony  of  the  man's  pain, 
is  on  his  knees,  pressing  his  chest  on  the  man's 
chest,  trying  with  an  arm  stretched  along  the 
man's  leg  to  keep  him  from  bouncing  in  the 
broken  stretcher. 

"  Needn't  have  troubled  to  have  brought 
him,"  said  the  hospital  orderly,  as  blood 
dripped  fast  from  the  stretcher,  black  in  the 
light  of  the  lantern.  "  He's  pretty  near 
dead  now.  He  won't  last  long." 


CHAPTER  VII 

SO  you  like  it,  Will  ?    You  like  this 
sort  of  thing  ?  " 
Martin  Howe  was  stretched  on  the 
grass  of  a  hillside  a  little  above  a  cross-roads. 
Beside  him  squatted  a  ruddy-faced  youth 
with  a  smudge  of  grease  on  his  faintly-hooked 
nose.     A  champagne  bottle  rested  against  his 
knees. 

'  Yes.  I've  never  been  happier  in  my  life. 
It's  a  coarse  boozing  sort  of  a  life,  but  I 
like  it." 

They  looked  over  the  landscape  of  greyish 
rolling  hills  scarred  everywhere  by  new  roads 
and  ranks  of  wooden  shacks.  Along  the  road 
beneath  them  crawled  like  beetles  convoy 
after  convoy  of  motor-trucks.  The  wind 
came  to  them  full  of  a  stench  of  latrines  and 
of  the  exhaust  of  motors. 

"  The  last  time  I  saw  you,"  said  Martin, 
after  a  pause,  "  was  early  one  morning  on  the 
Cambridge  bridge.  I  was  walking  out  from 
Boston,  and  we  talked  of  the  Eroica  they'd 
played  at  the  Symphony,  and  you  said  it  was 
silly  to  have  a  great  musician  try  to  play 
soldier.  D'you  remember  ?  " 

"No.  That  was  in  another  incarnation. 
Have  some  fizz." 

He  poured  from  the  bottle  into  a  battered 
tin  cup. 

"  But  talking  about  playing  soldier,  Howe, 
I  must  tell  you  about  how  our  lieutenant  got 
the  Croix  de  Guerre.  .  .  .  Somebody  ought  to 


86     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

write  a  book  called  Heroisms  of  the  Great 
War.  .  .  ." 

"  I  am  sure  that  many  people  have,  and 
will.  You  probably'll  do  it  yourself,  Will. 
But  go  on." 

The  sun  burst  from  the  huddled  clouds  for 
a  moment,  mottling  the  hills  and  the  scarred 
valleys  with  light.  The  shadow  of  an  aero 
plane  flying  low  passed  across  the  field,  and 
the  snoring  of  its  motors  cut  out  all  other 
sound. 

"  Well,  our  louie's  name's  Duval,  but  he 
spells  it  with  a  small  '  d '  and  a  big  '  V.' 
He's  been  wanting  a  Croix  de  Guerre  for  a 
hell  of  a  time  because  lots  of  fellows  in  the 
section  have  been  getting  'em.  He  tried 
giving  dinners  to  the  General  Staff  and 
everything,  but  that  didn't  seem  to  work.  So 
there  was  nothing  to  it  but  to  get  wounded. 
So  he  took  to  going  to  the  front  posts  ;  but  the 
trouble  was  that  it  was  a  hell  of  a  quiet  sector 
and  no  shells  ever  came  within  a  mile  of  it. 
At  last  somebody  made  a  mistake  and  a  little 
Austrian  eighty-eight  came  tumbling  in  and 
popped  about  fifty  yards  from  his  staff  car. 
He  showed  the  most  marvellous  presence  of 
mind,  'cause  he  clapped  his  hand  over  his  eye 
and  sank  back  in  the  seat  with  a  groan.  The 
doctor  asked  what  was  the  matter,  but  old 
Duval  just  kept  his  hand  tight  over  his  eye 
and  said,  '  Nothing,  nothing  ;  just  a  scratch/ 
and  went  off  to  inspect  the  posts.  Of  course 
the  posts  didn't  need  inspecting.  And  he 
rode  round  all  day  with  a  handkerchief  over 
one  eye  and  a  look  of  heroism  in  the  other. 
But  never  would  he  let  the  doctor  even  peep 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917    87 

at  it.  Next  morning  he  came  out  with  a 
bandage  round  his  head  as  big  as  a  sheik's 
turban.  He  went  so  see  headquarters  in  that 
get-up  and  lunched  with  the  staff-officers. 
Well,  he  got  his  Croix  de  Guerre  all  right — 
cited  for  assuring  the  evacuation  of  the 
wounded  under  fire  and  all  the  rest  of  it." 

"  Some  bird.  He'll  probably  get  to  be  a 
general  before  the  war's  over." 

Howe  poured  out  the  last  of  the  champagne, 
and  threw  the  bottle  listlessly  off  into  the 
grass,  where  it  struck  an  empty  shell-case  and 
broke. 

"  But,  Will,  you  can't  like  this,"  he  said. 
"  It's  all  so  like  an  ash-heap,  a  huge  garbage- 
dump  of  men  and  equipment." 

"  I  suppose  it  is  .  .  ."  said  the  ruddy-faced 
youth,  discovering  the  grease  on  his  nose  and 
rubbing  it  off  with  the  back  of  his  hand. 
"  Damn  those  dirty  Fords.  They  get  grease 
all  over  you  !  I  suppose  it  is  that  life  was  so 
dull  in  America  that  anything  seems  better. 
I  worked  a  year  in  an  office  before  leaving 
home.  Give  me  the  garbage-dump." 

"  Look,"  said  Martin,  shading  his  eyes 
with  his  hand  and  staring  straight  up  into  the 
sky.  ' "  There  are  two  planes  fighting." 

They  both  screwed  up  their  eyes  to  stare 
into  the  sky,  where  two  bits  of  mica  were 
circling.  Below  them,'  like  wads  of  cotton 
wool,  some  white  and  others  black,  were 
rows  of  the  smoke-puffs  of  shrapnel  from 
anti-aircraft  guns. 

The '  two  boys  watched  the  specks  in 
silence.  At  last  one  began  to  grow  larger, 
seemed  to  be  falling  in  wide  spirals.  The 


88     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

other  had  vanished.  The  falling  aeroplane 
started  rising  again  into  the  middle  sky,  then 
stopped  suddenly,  burst  into  flames,  and 
fluttered  down  behind  the  hills,  leaving  an 
irregular  trail  of  smoke. 

"  More  garbage,"  said  the  ruddy-faced 
youth,  as  he  rose  to  his  feet. 

"  Shrapnel.  What  a  funny  place  to  shoot 
shrapnel ! " 

"  They  must  have  got  the  bead  on  that 
bunch  of  material  the  genie's  bringing  in." 

There  was  an  explosion  and  a  vicious  whine 
of  shrapnel  bullets  among  the  trees.  On  the 
road  a  staff-car  turned  round  hastily  and 
speeded  back. 

Martin  got  up  from  where  he  was  lying  on 
the  grass  under  a  pine  tree,  looking  at  the 
sky,  and  put  his  helmet  on  ;  as  he  did  so  there 
was  another  sharp  bang  overhead  and  a  little 
reddish-brown  cloud  that  suddenly  spread 
and  drifted  away  among  the  quiet  tree-tops. 
He  took  off  his  helmet  and  examined  it 
quizzically. 

'  Tom,  I've  got  a  dent  in  the  helmet." 

Tom  Randolph  made  a  grab  for  the  little 
piece  of  jagged  iron  that  had  rebounded  from 
the  helmet  and  lay  at  his  feet. 

"  God  damn,  it's  hot,"  he  cried,  dropping  it ; 
"  anyway,  finding's  keepings."  He  put  his 
foot  on  the  shrapnel  splinter. 

'  That  ought  to  be  mine,  I  swear,  Tom." 

"  You've  got  the  dent,  Howe ;  what  more 
do  you  want  ?  " 

'  Damn  hog." 

Martin  sat  on  the  top  step  of  the  dugout, 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    89 

diving  down  whenever  he  heard  a  shell-shriek 
loudening  in  the  distance.  Beside  him  was  a 
tall  man  with  the  crossed  cannon  of  the 
artillery  in  his  helmet,  and  a  shrunken  brown 
face  with  crimson- veined  cheeks  and  very  long 
silky  black  moustaches. 

"  A  dirty  business/*  he  said.  "  It's  idiotic. 
.  .  .  Name  of  a  dog  !  " 

Grabbing  each  other's  arms,  they  tumbled 
down  the  steps  together  as  a  shell  passed 
overhead  to  burst  in  a  tree  down  the  road. 

"  Now  look  at  that."  The  man  held  up  his 
musette  to  Howe.  "  I've  broken  the  bottle 
of  Bordeaux  I  had  in  my  musette.  It's 
idiotic." 

"  Been  on  permission  ?  " 

"  Don't  I  look  it  ?  " 

They  sat  at  the  top  of  the  steps  again  ;  the 
man  took  out  bits  of  wet  glass  dripping  red 
wine  from  his  little  bag,  swearing  all  the 
while. 

"  I  was  bringing  it  to  the  little  captain. 
He's  a  nice  little  old  chap,  the  little  captain, 
and  he  loves  good  wine." 

"  Bordeaux  ?  " 

"  Can't  you  smell  it  ?  It's  Medoc,  1900, 
from  my  own  vines.  .  .  .  Look,  taste  it, 
there's  still  a  little."  He  held  up  the  neck 
of  the  bottle  and  Martin  took  a  sip. 

The  artilleryman  drank  the  rest  of  it, 
twisted  his  long  moustaches  and  heaved  a 
deep  sigh. 

"  Go  there,  my  poor  good  old  wine, 
threw  the  remnants  of  the  bottle  into  the 
underbrush.     Shrapnel  burst  a  little  down  the 
road.     "  Oh,  this  is  a  dirty  business  !    I  am  a 


go     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

Gascon.  ...  I  like  to  live."    He  put  a  dirty 
brown  hand  on  Martin's  arm. 

"  How  old  do  you  think  I  am  ?  " 
1  Thirty-five." 

"  I  am  twenty-four.  Look  at  the  picture." 
From  a  tattered  black  note-book  held  to 
gether  by  an  elastic  band  he  pulled  a  snapshot 
of  a  jolly-looking  young  man  with  a  fleshy  face 
and  his  hands  tucked  into  the  top  of  a  wide, 
tightly- wound  sash.  He  looked  at  the  pic 
ture,  smiling  and  tugging  at  one  of  his  long 
moustaches.  "  Then  I  was  twenty.  It's  the 
war."  He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  put  the 
picture  carefully  back  into  his  inside  pocket. 
"  Oh,  it's  idiotic  !  " 

'  You  must  have  had  a  tough  time." 
"  It's  just  that  people  aren't  meant  for  this 
sort  of  thing,"  said  the  artilleryman  quietly. 
"  You  don't  get  accustomed.  The  more  you 
see  the  worse  it  is.  Then  you  end  by  going 
crazy.  Oh,  it's  idiotic  !  " 

'  How  did  you  find  things  at  home  ?  " 
"  Oh,  at  home  !  Oh,  what  do  I  care  about 
that  now  ?  They  get  on  without  you.  .  .  . 
But  we  used  to  know  how  to  live,  we  Gascons. 
We  worked  so  hard  on  the  vines  and  on  the 
fruit-trees,  and  we  kept  a  horse  and  carriage. 
I  had  the  best-looking  rig  in  the  department. 
Sunday  it  was  fun  ;  we'd  play  bowls  and  I'd 
ride  about  with  my  wife.  Oh,  she  was  nice 
in  those  days  !  She  was  young  and  fat  and 
laughed  all  the  time.  She  was  something  a 
man  could  put  his  arms  around,  she  was. 
We'd  go  out  in  my  rig.  It  was  click-clack  of 
the  whip  in  the  air  and  off  we  were  in  the 
broad  road.  .  .  .  Sacred  name  of  a  pig,  that 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    91 

one  was  close.  .  .  .  And  the  Marquis  of 
Montmarieul  had  a  rig,  too,  but  not  so  good 
as  mine,  and  my  horse  would  always  pass  his 
in  the  road.  Oh,  it  was  funny,  and  he'd  look 
so  sour  to  have  common  people  like  us  pass 
him  in  the  road.  .  .  .  Boom,  there's  another. 
.  .  .  And  the  Marquis  now  is  nicely  embusque 
in  the  automobile  service.  He  is  stationed  at 
Versailles.  .  .  .  And  look  at  me.  .  .  .  But 
what  do  I  care  about  all  that  now  ?  " 

"  But  after  the  war  .  .  ." 

"  After  the  war  ?  "  He  spat  savagely  on 
the  first  step  of  the  dugout.  "  They  learn  to 
get  on  without  you." 

"  But  we'll  be  free  to  do  as  we  please." 
'  We'll  never  forget." 

"  I  shall  go  to  Spain  ..."  A  piece  of 
shrapnel  ripped  past  Martin's  ear,  cutting  off 
the  sentence. 

"  Name  of  God  !  It's  getting  hot.  .  .  . 
Spain:  I  know  Spain."  The  artilleryman 
jumped  up  and  began  dancing,  Spanish 
fashion,  snapping  his  fingers,  his  big  mous 
taches  swaying  and  trembling.  Several  shells 
burst  down  the  road  in  quick  succession,  filling 
the  air  with  a  whine  of  fragments. 

"  A  cook  waggon  got  it  !  "  the  artilleryman 
shouted,  dancing  on.  "  Tra-la  la  la-la-la-la, 
la-la  la,"  he  sang,  snapping  his  fingers. 

He  stopped  and  spat  again. 

"  What  do  I  care  ?  "  he  said.  '  Well,  so 
long,  old  chap.  I  must  go.  ...  Say,  let's 
change  knives — a  little  souvenir." 

"  Great." 

"  Good  luck." 

The  artilleryman  strode  off  through  the 


92     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

woods,  past  the  portable  fence  that  sur 
rounded  the  huddled  wooden  crosses  of  the 
graveyard. 

Against  the  red  glare  of  the  dawn  the 
wilderness  of  shattered  trees  stands  out 
purple,  hidden  by  grey  mist  in  the  hollows, 
looped  and  draped  fantastically  with  strands 
of  telephone  wire  and  barbed  wire,  tangled 
like  leafless  creepers,  that  hang  in  clots  against 
the  red  sky.  Here  and  there  guns  squat 
among  piles  of  shells  covered  with  mottled 
green  cheese-cloth,  and  spit  long  tongues  of 
yellow  flame  against  the  sky.  The  am 
bulance  waits  by  the  side  of  the  rutted  road 
littered  with  tin  cans  and  brass  shell-cases, 
while  a  doctor  and  two  stretcher-bearers  bend 
over  a  man  on  a  stretcher  laid  among  the 
underbrush.  The  man  groans  and  there  is  a 
sound  of  ripping  bandages.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  road  a  fallen  mule  feebly  wags  its  head 
from  side  to  side,  a  mass  of  purple  froth 
hanging  from  its  mouth  and  wide-stretched 
scarlet  nostrils. 

There  is  a  new  smell  in  the  wind,  a  smell 
unutterably  sordid,  like  the  smell  of  the  poor 
immigrants  landing  at  Ellis  Island.  Martin 
Howe  glances  round  and  sees  advancing  down 
the  road  ranks  and  ranks  of  strange  grey  men 
whose  mushroom-shaped  helmets  give  an 
eerie  look  as  of  men  from  the  moon  in  a  fairy 
tale. 

'  Why,  they're  Germans,"  he  says  to 
himself ;  "  I'd  quite  forgotten  they  existed." 

"  Ah,  they're  prisoners."     The  doctor  gets 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    93 

to  his  feet  and  glances  down  the  road  and  then 
turns  to  his  work  again. 

The  tramp  of  feet  marching  in  unison  on 
the  rough  shell-pitted  road,  and  piles  and  piles 
of  grey  men  clotted  with  dried  mud,  from 
whom  comes  the  new  smell,  the  sordid, 
miserable  smell  of  the  enemy. 

:< Things  going  well?  '  Martin  asks  a 
guard,  a  man  with  ashen  face  and  eyes  that 
burn  out  of  black  sockets. 

"  How  should  I  know  ?  " 

"  Many  prisoners  ?  " 

"  How  should  I  know  ?  " 

The  captain  and  the  aumonier  are  taking 
their  breakfast,  each  sitting  on  a  packing-box 
with  their  tin  cups  and  tin  plates  ranged  on 
the  board  propped  up  between  them.  All 
round  red  clay,  out  of  which  the  abri  was 
excavated.  A  smell  of  antiseptics  from  the 
door  of  the  dressing-station  and  of  lime  and 
latrines  mingling  with  the  greasy  smell  of  the 
movable  kitchen  not  far  away.  They  are 
eating  dessert,  slices  of  pineapple  speared 
with  a  knife  out  of  a  can.  In  their  manner 
there  is  something  that  makes  Martin  see 
vividly  two  gentlemen  in  frock-coats  dining  at 
a  table  under  the  awning  of  a  cafe  on  the 
boulevards.  It  has  a  leisurely  ceremonious- 
ness,  an  ease  that  could  exist  nowhere  else. 

"  No,  my  friend,"  the  doctor  is  saying,  "  I 
do  not  think  that  an  apprehension  of  religion 
existed  in  the  mind  of  palaeolithic  man." 

"  But,  my  captain,  don't  you  think  that 
you  scientific  people  sometimes  lose  a  little  of 


94     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

the  significance  of  things,  insisting  always 
on  their  scientific,  in  this  case  on  their 
anthropological,  aspect  ?  'J 

"  Not  in  the  least ;  it  is  the  only  way  to 
look  at  them." 

'  There  are  other  ways,"  says  the  aumonier, 
smiling. 

"  One  moment.  .  .  ."  From  under  the 
packing-box  the  captain  produced  a  small 
bottle  of  anisette.  "  You'll  have  a  little 
glass,  won't  you  ?  " 

"  With  the  greatest  pleasure.  What  a 
rarity  here,  anisette." 

"  But,  as  I  was  about  to  say,  take  our  life 
here,  for  an  example."  ...  A  shell  shrieks 
overhead  and  crashes  hollowly  in  the  woods 
behind  the  dugout.  Another  follows  it,  ex 
ploding  nearer.  The  captain  picks  a  few  bits 
of  gravel  off  the  table,  reaches  for  his  helmet 
and  continues.  "  For  example,  our  life  here, 
which  is,  as  was  the  life  of  palaeolithic  man, 
taken  up  only  with  the  bare  struggle  for 
existence  against  overwhelming  odds.  You 
know  yourself  that  it  is  not  conducive  to 
religion  or  any  emotion  except  that  of  pre 
servation." 

"  I  hardly  admit  that.  .  .  .  Ah,  I  saved 
it,"  the  aumonier  announces,  catching  the 
bottle  of  anisette  as  it  is  about  to  fall  off  the 
table.  An  exploding  shell  rends  the  air  about 
them.  There  is  a  pause,  and  a  shower  of 
earth  and  gravel  tumbles  about  their  ears. 

"  I  must  go  and  see  if  anyone  was  hurt," 
says  the  aumonier,  clambering  up  the  clay 
bank  to  the  level  of  the  ground  ;  "  but  you 
will  admit,  my  captain,  that  the  sentiment  of 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917     95 

preservation  is  at  least  akin  to  the  funda 
mental  feelings  of  religion." 

"  My  dear  friend,  I  admit  nothing.  .  .  . 
Till  this  evening,  good-bye."  He  waves  his 
hand  and  goes  into  the  dugout. 

Martin  and  two  French  soldiers  drinking 
sour  wine  in  the  doorway  of  a  deserted  house. 
It  was  raining  outside  and  now  and  then  a 
dripping  camion  passed  along  the  road, 
slithering  through  the  mud. 

'  This  is  the  last  summer  of  the  war.  ... 
It  must  be,"  said  the  little  man  with  large 
brown  eyes  and  a  childish,  chubby  brown  face, 
who  sat  on  Martin's  left. 
'  Why  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  Everyone  feels  like 
that." 

"  I  don't  see,"  said  Martin,  "  why  it 
shouldn't  last  for  ten  or  twenty  years.  Wars 
have  before.  ..." 

"  How  long  have  you  been  at  the  front  ?  " 

"  Six  months,  off  and  on." 

"  After  another  six  months  you'll  know 
why  it  can't  go  on." 

"  I  don't  know;  it  suits  me  all  right,"  said 
the  man  on  the  other  side  of  Martin,  a  man 
with  a  jovial  red  rabbit-like  face.  "  Of 
course,  I  don't  like  being  dirty  and  smelling 
and  all  that,  but  one  gets  accustomed  to  it." 

"  But  you  are  an  Alsatian;  you  don't  care." 

"  I  was  a  baker.  They're  going  to  send  me 
to  Dijon  soon  to  bake  army  bread.  It'll  be  a 
change.  There'll  be  wine  and  lots  of  little 
girls.  Good  God,  how  drunk  I'll  be ;  and,  old 
chap,  you  just  watch  me  with  the  women. . . ." 


96     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  I  should  just  like  to  get  home  and  not  be 
ordered  about,"  said  the  first  man.  "  I've 
been  lucky,  though,"  he  went  on  ;  "  I've  been 
kept  most  of  the  time  in  reserve.  I  only  had 
to  use  my  bayonet  once." 

'  When  was  that  ?  "  asked  Martin. 

"  Near  Mont  Cornelien,  last  year.  We  put 
them  to  the  bayonet  and  I  was  running  and  a 
man  threw  his  arms  up  just  in  front  of  me 
saying,  '  Mon  ami,  mon  ami,'  in  French.  I 
ran  on  because  I  couldn't  stop,  and  I  heard  my 
bayonet  grind  as  it  went  through  his  chest. 
I  tripped  over  something  and  fell  down." 

'  You  were  scared,"  said  the  Alsatian. 

"  Of  course  I  was  scared.  I  was  trembling 
all  over  like  an  old  dog  in  a  thunderstorm. 
When  I  got  up,  he  was  lying  on  his  side  with 
his  mouth  open  and  blood  running  out,  my 
bayonet  still  sticking  into  him.  You  know 
you  have  to  put  your  foot  against  a  man  and 
pull  hard  to  get  the  bayonet  out." 

"  And  if  you're  good  at  it,"  cried  the 
Alsatian,  "  you  ought  to  yank  it  out  as  your 
Boche  falls  and  be  ready  for  the  next  one. 
The  time  they  gave  me  the  Croix  de  Guerre 
I  got  three  in  succession,  just  like  at  drill." 

"  Oh,  I  was  so  sorry  I  had  killed  him,"  went 
on  the  other  Frenchman.  '  When  I  went 
through  his  pockets  I  found  a  post-card.  Here 
it  is  ;  I  have  it."  He  pulled  out  a  cracked 
and  worn  leather  wallet,  from  which  he  took  a 
photograph  and  a  bunch  of  pictures.  "  Look, 
this  photograph  was  there,  too.  It  hurt  my 
heart.  You  see,  it's  a  woman  and  two  little 
girls.  They  look  so  nice.  .  .  .  It's  strange, 
but  I  have  two  children,  too,  only  one's  a 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     97 

boy.  I  lay  down  on  the  ground  beside  him — 
I  was  all  in — and  listened  to  the  machine-guns 
tapping  put,  put,  put,  put,  put,  all  round. 
I  wished  I'd  let  him  kill  me  instead.  That 
was  funny,  wasn't  it  ?  " 

"  It's  idiotic  to  feel  like  that.  Put  them 
to  the  bayonet,  all  of  them,  the  dirty  Boches. 
Why,  the  only  money  I've  had  since  the  war 
began,  except  my  five  sous,  was  fifty  francs  I 
found  on  a  German  officer.  I  wonder  where 
he  got  it,  the  old  corpse-stripper." 

"  Oh,  it's  shameful !  I  am  ashamed  of 
being  a  man.  Oh,  the  shame,  the  shame.  .  ." 
The  other  man  buried  his  face  in  his  hands. 

"  I  wish  they  were  serving  out  gniolle  for  an 
attack  right  now,"  said  the  Alsatian,  "  or  the 
gniolle  without  the  attack  'd  be  better  yet." 

'  Wait  here,"  said  Martin,  "  I'll  go  round 
to  the  cope  and  get  a  bottle  of  fizzy.  We'll 
drink  to  peace  or  war,  as  you  like.  Damn 
this  rain  !  " 

"  It's  a  shame  to  bury  those  boots,"  said 
the  sergeant  of  the  stretcher-bearers. 

From  the  long  roll  of  blanket  on  the  ground 
beside  the  hastily-dug  grave  protruded  a  pair 
of  high  boots,  new  and  well  polished  as  if  for 
parade.  All  about  the  earth  was  scarred 
with  turned  clay  like  raw  wounds,  and  the 
tilting  arms  of  little  wooden  crosses  huddled 
together,  with  here  and  there  a  bent  wreath 
or  a  faded  bunch  of  flowers. 

Overhead  in  the  stripped  trees  a  bird  was 
singing. 

"  Shall  we  take  them  off  ?  It's  a  shame  to 
bury  a  pair  of  boots  like  that." 

G 


98     ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

"  So  many  poor  devils  need  boots." 

"  Boots  cost  so  dear." 

Already  two  men  were  lowering  the  long 
bundle  into  the  grave. 

"  Wait  a  minute ;  we've  got  a  coffin  for 
him." 

A  white  board  coffin  was  brought. 

The  boots  thumped  against  the  bottom  as 
they  put  the  big  bundle  in. 

An  officer  strode  into  the  enclosure  of  the 
graveyard,  flicking  his  knees  with  a  twig. 

"  Is  this  Lieutenant  Dupont  ?  "  he  asked  of 
the  sergeant. 

'  Yes,  my  lieutenant." 

"  Can  you  see  his  face  ?  "  The  officer 
stooped  and  pulled  apart  the  blanket  where 
the  head  was. 

"  Poor  Rene,"  he  said.  "  Thank  you. 
Good-bye,"  and  strode  out  of  the  graveyard. 

The  yellowish  clay  fell  in  clots  on  the  boards 
of  the  coffin.  The  sergeant  bared  his  head  and 
the  aumonier  came  up,  opening  his  book  with 
a  vaguely  professional  air. 

"  It  was  a  shame  to  bury  those  boots.  Boots 
are  so  dear  nowadays,"  said  the  sergeant, 
mumbling  to  himself  as  he  walked  back 
towards  the  little  broad  shanty  they  used  as  a 
morgue. 

Of  the  house,  a  little  pale  salmon-coloured 
villa,  only  a  shell  remained,  but  the  garden 
was  quite  untouched  ;  fall  roses  and  bunches 
of  white  and  pink  and  violet  phlox  bloomed 
there  among  the  long  grass  and  the  intruding 
nettles.  In  the  centre  the  round  concrete 
fountain  was  no  longer  full  of  water,  but  a 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917    99 

few  brownish-green  toads  still  inhabited  it. 
The  place  smelt  of  box  and  sweetbriar  and 
yew,  and  when  you  lay  down  on  the  grass 
where  it  grew  short  under  the  old  yew  tree 
by  the  fountain,  you  could  see  nothing  but 
placid  sky  and  waving  green  leaves.  Martin 
Howe  and  Tom  Randolph  would  spend  there 
the  quiet  afternoons  when  they  were  off  duty, 
sleeping  in  the  languid  sunlight,  or  chatting 
lazily,  pointing  out  to  each  other  tiny  things, 
the  pattern  of  snail-shells,  the  glitter  of 
insects'  wings,  colours,  fragrances  that  made 
vivid  for  them  suddenly  beauty  and  life,  all 
that  the  shells  that  shrieked  overhead,  to 
explode  on  the  road  behind  them,  threatened 
to  wipe  out. 

One  afternoon  Russell  joined  them,  a  tall 
young  man  with  thin  face  and  aquiline  nose 
and  unexpectedly  light  hair. 

"  Chef  says  we  may  go  en  repos  in  three 
days,"  he  said,  throwing  himself  on  the 
ground  beside  the  other  two. 

"  We've  heard  that  before,"  said  Tom 
Randolph.  "  Division  hasn't  started  out  yet, 
ole  boy  ;  an'  we're  the  last  of  the  division." 

"  God,  I'll  be  glad  to  go.  ...  I'm  dead," 
said  Russell. 

"  I  was  up  all  last  night  with  dysentery." 

"  So  was  I.  ...  It  was  not  funny ;  first 
it'd  be  vomiting,  and  then  diarrhoea,  and  then 
the  shells'd  start  coming  in.  Gave  me  a 
merry  time  of  it." 

"  They  say  it's  the  gas,"  said  Martin. 

"  God,  the  gas  !  Turns  me  sick  to  think 
of  it,"  said  Russell,  stroking  his  forehead  with 
his  hand.  "  Did  I  tell  you  about  what 


ioo     ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

happened  to  me  the  night  after  the  attack,  up 
in  the  woods  ?  " 

"  No." 

'  Well,  I  was  bringing  a  load  of  wounded 
down  from  P.  J.  Right  and  I'd  got  just  beyond 
the  corner  where  the  little  muddy  hill  is — 
you  know,  where  they're  always  shelling — 
when  I  found  the  road  blocked.  It  was  so 
God-damned  black  you  couldn't  see  your 
hand  in  front  of  you.  A  camion' d  gone  off 
the  road  and  another  had  run  into  it,  and 
everything  was  littered  with  boxes  of  shells 
spilt  about." 

"  Must  have  been  real  nice,"  said  Randolph. 

"  The  devilish  part  of  it  was  that  I  was  all 
alone.  Coney  was  too  sick  with  diarrhcea  to 
be  any  use,  so  I  left  him  up  at  the  post, 
running  out  at  both  ends  like  he'd  die.  Well 
...  I  yelled  and  shouted  like  hell  in  my  bad 
French  and  blew  my  whistle  and  sweated,  and 
the  damned  wounded  inside  moaned  and 
groaned.  And  the  shells  were  coming  in  so 
thick  I  thought  my  number'd  turn  up  any 
time.  An'  I  couldn't  get  anybody.  So  I 
just  climbed  up  in  the  second  camion  and 
backed  it  off  into  the  bushes.  .  .  .  God,  I  bet 
it'll  take  a  wrecking  crew  to  get  it  out.  .  .  ." 

"  That  was  one  good  job. 

"  But  there  I  was  with  another  square  in 
the  road  and  no  chance  to  pass  that  I  could  see 
in  that  darkness.  Then  what  I  was  going  to 
tell  you  about  happened.  I  saw  a  little  bit  of 
light  in  a  ditch  beside  a  big  car  that  seemed 
to  be  laying  on  its  side,  and  I  went  down  to  it 
and  there  was  a  bunch  of  camion  drivers, 
sitting  round  a  lantern  drinking. 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917  101 

"  '  Hello,  have  a  drink  ! '  they  called  out  to 
me,  and  one  of  them  got  up,  waving  his 
arms,  ravin'  drunk,  and  threw  his  arms  around 
me  and  kissed  me  on  the  mouth.  His  hair 
and  beard  were  full  of  wet  mud.  .  .  .  Then 
he  dragged  me  into  the  crowd. 

'  Ha,  here's  a  copain  come  to  die  with 
us,'  he  cried. 

"  I  gave  him  a  shove  and  he  fell  down.  But 
another  one  got  up  and  handed  me  a  tin  cup 
full  of  that  God-damned  gniolle,  that  I  drank 
not  to  make  'em  sore.  Then  they  all  shouted, 
and  stood  about  me,  sayin',  '  American's  goin' 
to  die  with  us.  He's  goin'  to  drink  with  us. 
He's  goin'  to  die  with  us.'  And  the  shells 
comin'  in  all  the  while.  God,  I  was  scared. 

"  '  I  want  to  get  a  camion  moved  to  the 
side  of  the  road.  .  .  .  Good-bye,'  I  said. 
There  didn't  seem  any  use  talkin'  to  them. 

"  '  But  you've  come  to  stay  with  us,'  they 
said,  and  made  me  drink  some  more  booze. 
'  You've  come  to  die  with  us.  Remember 
you  said  so.' 

"  The  sweat  was  running  into  my  eyes  so's 
I  could  hardly  see.  I  told  'em  I'd  be  right 
back  and  slipped  away  into  the  dark.  Then 
I  thought  I'd  never  get  the  second  camion 
cranked.  At  last  I  managed  it  and  put  it  so 
I  could  squeeze  past,  but  they  saw  me  and 
jumped  up  on  the  running-board  of  the 
ambulance,  tried  to  stop  the  car,  all  yellin'  at 
once,  '  It's  no  use,  the  road's  blocked  both 
ways.  You  can't  pass.  You'd  better  stay 
and  die  with  us.  Caput.' 

"  Well,  I  put  my  foot  on  the  accelerator 
and  hit  one  of  them  so  hard  with  the  mud- 


102   ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

guard  he  fell  into  the  lantern  and  put  it  out. 
Then  I  got  away.  An'  how  I  got  past  the 
stuff  in  that  road  afterwards  was  just  luck. 
I  couldn't  see  a  God-damn  thing  ;  it  was  so 
black  and  I  was  so  nerved  up.  God,  I'll 
never  forget  these  chaps'  shoutin',  '  Here's  a 
feller  come  to  die  with  us.'  ' 

'  Whew  !     That's  some  story,"  said  Ran 
dolph. 

"  That'll  make  a  letter  home,  won't  it  ?  " 
said  Russell,  smiling.  "  Guess  my  girl'll 
think  I'm  heroic  enough  after  that." 

Martin's  eyes  were  watching  a  big  dragon 
fly  with  brown  body  and  cream  and  rainbow 
wings  that  hovered  over  the  empty  fountain 
and  the  three  boys  stretched  on  the  grass,  and 
was  gone  against  the  azure  sky. 

The  prisoner  had  grey  flesh,  so  grimed  with 
mud  that  you  could  not  tell  if  he  were  young 
or  old.  His  uniform  hung  in  a  formless  clot 
of  mud  about  a  slender  frame.  They  had 
treated  him  at  the  dressing-station  for  a  gash 
in  his  upper  arm,  and  he  was  being  used  to 
help  the  stretcher-bearers.  Martin  sat  in  the 
front  seat  of  the  ambulance,  watching  him 
listlessly  as  he  walked  down  the  rutted  road 
under  the  torn  shreds  of  camouflage  that 
fluttered  a  little  in  the  wind.  Martin  won 
dered  what  he  was  thinking.  Did  he  accept 
all  this  stench  and  filth  and  degradation  of 
slavery  as  part  of  the  divine  order  of  things  ? 
Or  did  he  too  burn  with  loathing  and  revolt  ? 

And  all  those  men  beyond  the  hill  and  the 
wood,  what  were  they  thinking  ?  But  how 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917  103 

could  they  think  ?  The  lies  they  were  drank 
on  would  keep  them  eternally  from  thinking. 
They  had  never  had  any  chance  to  think  until 
they  were  hurried  into  the  jaws  of  it,  where 
was  no  room  but  for  laughter  and  misery  and 
the  smell  of  blood. 

The  rutted  road  was  empty  now.  Most  of 
the  batteries  were  quiet.  Overhead  in  the 
brilliant  sky  aeroplanes  snored  monotonously. 

The  woods  all  about  him  were  a  vast 
rubbish-heap  ;  the  jagged,  splinteved  boles  of 
leafless  trees  rose  in  every  direction  from  heaps 
of  brass  shell-cases,  of  tin  cans,  of  bits  of 
uniform  and  equipment.  The  wind  came  in 
puffs  laden  with  an  odour  as  of  dead  rats  in  an 
attic.  And  this  was  what  all  the  centuries  of 
civilisation  had  struggled  for.  For  this  had 
generations  worn  away  their  lives  in  mines 
and  factories  and  forges,  in  fields  and  work 
shops,  toiling,  screwing  higher  and  higher  the 
tension  of  their  minds  and  muscles,  polishing 
brighter  and  brighter  the  mirror  of  their 
intelligence.  For  this  ! 

The  German  prisoner  and  another  man  had 
appeared  in  the  road  again,  carrying  a 
stretcher  between  them,  walking  with  the 
slow,  meticulous  steps  of  great  fatigue.  A 
series  of  shells  came  in,  like  three  cracks  of  a 
whip  along  the  road.  Martin  followed  the 
stretcher-bearers  into  the  dugout. 

The  prisoner  wiped  the  sweat  from  his 
grime-streaked  forehead,  and  started  up  the 
step  of  the  dugout  again,  a  closed  stretcher  on 
his  shoulder.  Something  made  Martin  look 
after  him  as  he  strolled  down  the  rutted  road. 


104    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

He  wished  he  knew  German  so  that  he  might 
call  after  the  man  and  ask  him  what  manner 
of  a  man  he  was. 

Again,  like  snapping  of  a  whip,  three  shells 
flashed  yellow  as  they  exploded  in  the  brilliant 
sunlight  of  the  road.  The  slender  figure  of  the 
prisoner  bent  suddenly  double,  like  a  pocket- 
knife  closing,  and  lay  still.  Martin  ran  out, 
stumbling  in  the  hard  ruts.  In  a  soft  child's 
voice  the  prisoner  was  babbling  endlessly, 
contentedly.  Martin  kneeled  beside  him  and 
tried  to  lift  him,  clasping  him  round  the  chest 
under  the  arms.  He  was  very  hard  to  lift,  for 
his  legs  dragged  limply  in  their  soaked 
trousers,  where  the  blood  was  beginning  to 
saturate  the  muddy  cloth,  stickily.  Sweat 
dripped  from  Martin's  face,  on  the  man's  face, 
and  he  felt  the  arm-muscles  and  the  ribs 
pressed  against  his  body  as  he  clutched  the 
wounded  man  tightly  to  him  in  the  effort  of 
carrying  him  towards  the  dugout.  The  effort 
gave  Martin  a  strange  contentment.  It  was 
as  if  his  body  were  taking  part  in  the  agony  of 
this  man's  body.  At  last  they  were  washed 
out,  all  the  hatreds,  all  the  lies,  in  blood  and 
sweat.  Nothing  was  left  but  the  quiet  friend 
liness  of  beings  alike  in  every  part,  eternally 
alike. 

Two  men  with  a  stretcher  came  from  the 
dugout,  and  Martin  laid  the  man's  body,  fast 
growing  limper,  less  animated,  down  very 
carefully. 

As  he  stood  by  the  car,  wiping  the  blood  off 
his  hands  with  an  oily  rag,  he  could  still  feel 
the  man's  ribs  and  the  muscles  of  the  man's 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917  105 

arm  against  his  side.     It  made  him  strangely 
happy. 

At  the  end  of  the  dugout  a  man  was  drawing 
short,  hard  breath  as  if  he'd  been  running. 
There  was  the  accustomed  smell  of  blood  and 
chloride  and  bandages  and  filthy  miserable 
flesh.  Howe  lay  on  a  stretcher  wrapped  in 
his  blanket,  with  his  coat  over  him,  trying  to 
sleep.  There  was  very  little  light  from  a 
smoky  lamp  down  at  the  end  where  the 
wounded  were.  The  French  batteries  were 
fairly  quiet,  but  the  German  shells  were 
combing  through  the  woods,  coming  in  series 
of  three  and  four,  gradually  nearing  the 
dugout  and  edging  away  again.  Howe  saw 
the  woods  as  a  gambling  table  on  which, 
throw  after  throw,  scattered  the  random  dice 
of  death. 

He  pulled  his  blanket  up  round  his  head. 
He  must  sleep.  How  silly  to  think  about  it. 
It  was  luck.  If  a  shell  had  his  number  on  it 
he'd  be  gone  before  the  words  were  out  of  his 
mouth.  How  silly  that  he  might  be  dead 
any  minute  !  What  right  had  a  nasty  little 
piece  of  tinware  to  go  tearing  through  his 
rich,  feeling  flesh,  extinguishing  it  ? 

Like  the  sound  of  a  mosquito  in  his  ear, 
only  louder,  more  vicious,  a  shell-shriek 
shrilled  to  the  crash. 

Damn !  How  foolish,  how  supremely  silly 
that  tired  men  somewhere  away  in  the  woods 
the  other  side  of  the  lines  should  be  shoving  a 
shell  into  the  breach  of  a  gun  to  kill  him, 
Martin  Howe  ! 


io6    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

Like  dice  thrown  on  a  table,  shells  burst 
about  the  dugout,  now  one  side,  now  the 
other. 

"  Seem  to  have  taken  a  fancy  to  us  this 
evenin',"  Howe  heard  Tom  Randolph's  voice 
from  the  bunk  opposite. 

"  One,"  muttered  Martin  to  himself,  as  he 
lay  frozen  with  fear,  flat  on  his  back,  biting 
his  trembling  lips,  "  two.  .  .  .  God,  that  was 
near  !  " 

A  dragging  instant  of  suspense,  and  the 
shriek  growing  loud  out  of  the  distance. 

'  This  is  us."  He  clutched  the  sides  of  the 
stretcher. 

A  snorting  roar  rocked  the  dugout.  Dirt 
fell  in  his  face.  He  looked  about,  dazed. 
The  lamp  was  still  burning.  One  of  the 
wounded  men,  with  a  bandage  like  an  Arab's 
turban  about  his  head,  sat  up  in  his  stretcher 
with  wide,  terrified  eyes. 

"  God  watches  over  drunkards  and  the 
feeble-minded.  Don't  let's  worry,  Howe," 
shouted  Randolph  from  his  bunk. 

"  That  probably  bitched  car  No.  4  for  ever 
more,"  he  answered,  turning  on  his  stretcher, 
relieved  for  some  re;  son  from  the  icy  suspense. 

"  We  should  worry !  We'll  foot  it  home, 
that's  all." 

The  casting  of  the  dice  began  again,  farther 
away  this  time. 

"  We  won  that  throw,"  thought  Martin. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

DUCKS  quacking  woke  Martin.  For  a 
moment  he  could  not  think  where  he 
was ;  then  he  remembered.  The 
rafters  of  the  loft  of  the  farmhouse  over  his 
head  were  hung  with  bunches  of  herbs 
drying.  He  lay  a  long  while  on  his  back 
looking  at  them,  sniffing  the  sweetened  air, 
while  farmyard  sounds  occupied  his  ears, 
hens  cackling,  the  grunting  of  pigs,  the 
rou-cou-cou-cou,  rou-cou-cou-cou  of  pigeons 
under  the  eaves.  He  stretched  himself  and 
looked  about  him.  He  was  alone  except  for 
Tom  Randolph,  who  slept  in  a  pile  of  blankets 
next  to  the  wall,  his  head,  with  its  close- 
cropped  black  hair,  pillowed  on  his.  bare  arm. 
Martin  slipped  off  the  canvas  cot  he  had  slept 
on  and  went  to  the  window  of  the  loft,  a 
little  square  open  at  the  level  of  the  floor, 
through  which  came  a  dazzle  of  blue  and 
gold  and  green.  He  looked  out.  Stables 
and  hay-barns  filled  two  sides  of  the  farmyard 
below  him.  Behind  them  was  a  mass  of 
rustling  oak-trees.  On  the  lichen-greened 
tile  roofs  pigeons  strutted  about,  putting 
their  coral  feet  daintily  one  before  the  other, 
puffing  out  their  glittering  breasts.  He 
breathed  deep  of  the  smell  of  hay  and  manure 
and  cows  and  of  unpolluted  farms. 

From  the  yard  came  a  riotous  cackling  of 
chickens  and  quacking  of  ducks,  mingled  with 


ro8    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

the  peeping  of  the  little  broods.  In  the 
middle  a  girl  in  blue  gingham,  sleeves  rolled 
up  as  far  as  possible  on  her  brown  arms,  a 
girl  with  a  mass  of  dark  hair  loosely  coiled 
above  the  nape  of  her  neck,  was  throwing  to 
the  fowls  handfuls  of  grain  with  a  wide 
gesture. 

"  And  to  think  that  only  yesterday  ..." 
said  Martin  to  himself.  He  listened  carefully 
for  some  time.  "  Wonderful !  You  can't 
even  hear  the  guns." 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  evening  was  pearl-grey  when  they 
left  the  village ;  in  their  nostrils  was 
the  smell  of  the  leisurely  death  of 
the  year,   of  leaves  drying   and  falling,   of 
ripened  fruit  and  bursting  seed-pods. 

'  The  fall's  a  maddening  sort  o'  time  for 
me,"  said  Tom  Randolph.  "  It  makes  me 
itch  to  get  up  on  ma  hind  legs  an'  do  things, 
go  places." 

"  I  suppose  it's  that  the  earth  has  such  a  feel 
of  accomplishment,"  said  Howe. 

"  You  do  feel  as  if  Nature  had  pulled  off  her 
part  of  the  job  and  was  rest  in'." 

They  stopped  a  second  and  looked  about 
them,  breathing  deep.  On  one  side  of  the 
road  were  woods  where  in  long  alleys  the 
mists  deepened  into  purple  darkness. 

'  There's  the  moon." 

"  God !  it  looks  like  a  pumpkin." 

"  I  wish  those  guns'd  shut  up  'way  off  there 
to  the  north." 

'  They're  sort  of  irrelevant,  aren't  they  ?  ' 

They  walked  on,  silent,  listening  to  the 
guns  throbbing  far  away,  like  muffled  drums 
beaten  in  nervous  haste. 

"  Sounds  almost  like  a  barrage." 

Martin  for  some  reason  was  thinking  of  the 
last  verses  of  Shelley's  Hellas.  He  wished  he 
knew  them  so  that  he  could  recite  them. 

"  Faiths  and  empires  gleam 
Like  wrecks  in  a  dissolving  dream." 


no    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

The  purple  trunks  of  saplings  passed  slowly 
across  the  broad  face  of  the  moon  as  they 
walked  along.  How  beautiful  the  world  was  ! 

"  Look,  Tom."  Martin  put  his  arm  about 
Randolph's  shoulder  and  nodded  towards  the 
moon.  "  It  might  be  a  ship  with  puffed-out 
pumpkin-coloured  sails,  the  way  the  trees 
make  it  look  now." 

'  Wouldn't  it  be  great  to  go  to  sea  ?  "  said 
Randolph,  looking  straight  into  the  moon, 
"  an'  get  out  of  this  slaughter-house.  It's 
nice  to  see  the  war,  but  I  have  no  intention  of 
taking  up  butchery  as  a  profession.  .  .  . 
There  is  too  much  else  to  do  in  the  world." 

They  walked  slowly  along  the  road  talking 
of  the  sea,  and  Martin  told  how  when  he  was 
a  little  kid  he'd  had  an  uncle  who  used  to  tell 
him  about  the  Vikings  and  the  Swan  Path, 
and  how  one  of  the  great  moments  of  his  life 
had  been  when  he  and  a  friend  had  looked  out 
of  their  window  in  a  little  inn  on  Cape  Cod  one 
morning  and  seen  the  sea  and  the  swaying 
gold  path  of  the  sun  on  it,  stretching  away, 
beyond  the  horizon. 

"  Poor  old  life,"  he  said.  "  I'd  expected  to 
do  so  much  with  you."  And  they  both 
laughed,  a  little  bitterly. 

They  were  strolling  past  a  large  farmhouse 
that  stood  like  a  hen  among  chicks  in  a  crowd 
of  little  outbuildings.  A  man  in  the  road  lit  a 
cigarette  and  Martin  recognised  him  in  the 
orange  glare  of  the  match. 

"  Monsieur  Merrier  !  "  He  held  out  his 
hand.  It  was  the  aspirant  he  had  drunk  beer 
with  weeks  ago  at  Brocourt. 

"  Hah  !     It's  you  !  " 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  So  you  are  en  repos  here,  too  ?  " 
'  Yes,  indeed.     But  you  two  come  in  and 
see  us  ;  we  are  dying  of  the  blues." 
'  We'd  love  to  stop  in  for  a  second." 

A  fire  smouldered  in  the  big  hearth  of  the 
farmhouse  kitchen,  sending  a  little  irregular 
fringe  of  red  light  out  over  the  tiled  floor. 
At  the  end  of  the  room  towards  the  door  three 
men  were  seated  round  a  table,  smoking.  A 
candle  threw  their  huge  and  grotesque  sha 
dows  on  the  floor  and  on  the  whitewashed 
walls,  and  lit  up  the  dark  beams  of  that  part 
of  the  ceiling.  The  three  men  got  up  and 
everyone  shook  hands,  filling  the  room  with 
swaying  giant  shadows.  Champagne  was 
brought  and  tin  cups  and  more  candles,  and 
the  Americans  were  given  the  two  most 
comfortable  chairs. 

"It's  such  a  find  to  have  Americans  who 
speak  French,"  said  a  bearded  man  with 
unusually  large  brilliant  eyes.  He  had  been 
introduced  as  Andre  Dubois,  "  a  very  terrible 
person,"  had  added  Merrier,  laughing.  The 
cork  popped  out  of  the  bottle  he  had  been 
struggling  with. 

"  You  see,  we  never  can  find  out  what  you 
think  about  things.  ...  All  we  can  do  is  to 
be  sympathetically  inane,  and  vive  les  braves 
allies  and  that  sort  of  stuff." 

"  I  doubt  if  we  Americans  do  think,"  said 
Martin. 

"  Cigarettes,  who  wants  some  cigarettes  ?  ' 
cried  Lully,  a  small  man  with  a  very  brown 
oval  face  to  which  long  eyelashes  and  a  little 
bit  of  silky  black  moustache  gave  almost  a 
winsomeness.    When  he  laughed  he  showed 


ii2    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

brilliant,  very  regular  teeth.  As  he  handed 
the  cigarettes  about  he  looked  searchingly  at 
Martin  with  eyes  disconcertingly  intense. 
"  Merrier  has  told  us  about  you/'  he  said. 
"  You  seem  to  be  the  first  American  we've  met 
who  agreed  with  us." 
'  What  about  ?  " 

"  About  the  war,  of  course." 

"  Yes,"  took  up  the  fourth  man,  a  blonde 
Norman  with  an  impressive,  rather  majestic 
face,  "  we  were  very  interested.  You  see,  we 
bore  each  other,  talking  always  among  our 
selves.  ...  I  hope  you  won't  be  offended  if  I 
agree  with  you  in  saying  that  Americans  never 
think.  I've  been  in  Texas,  you  see." 

"  Really  ?  " 

"  Yes,  I  went  to  a  Jesuit  College  in  Dallas. 
I  was  preparing  to  enter  the  Society  of 
Jesus." 

"  How  long  have  you  been  in  the  war  ?  " 
asked  Andre  Dubois,  passing  his  hand  across 
his  beard. 

"  We've  both  been  in  the  same  length  of 
time — about  six  months." 

"Do  you  like  it  ?" 

"  I  don't  have  a  bad  time.  .  .  .  But  the 
people  in  Boccaccio  managed  to  enjoy  them 
selves  while  the  plague  was  at  Florence. 
That  seems  to  me  the  only  way  to  take  the 
war." 

"  We  have  no  villa  to  take  refuge  in, 
though,"  said  Dubois,  "  and  we  have  for 
gotten  all  our  amusing  stories." 

"  And  in  America — they  like  the  war  ?  " 

"  They  don't  know  what  it  is.  They  are 
like  children.  They  believe  everything  they 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     n3 

are  told,  you  see ;  they  have  had  no  ex 
perience  in  international  affairs,  like  you 
Europeans.  To  me  our  entrance  into  the  war 
is  a  tragedy." 

"  It's  sort  of  goin'  back  on  our  only  excuse 
for  existing,"  put  in  Randolph. 

"  In  exchange  for  all  the  quiet  and  the 
civilisation  and  the  beauty  of  ordered  lives 
that  Europeans  gave  up  in  going  to  the  new 
world  we  gave  them  opportunity  to  earn 
luxury,  and,  infinitely  more  important,  free 
dom  from  the  past,  that  gangrened  ghost  of 
the  past  that  is  killing  Europe~!o-day  with  its 
infection  of  hate  and  greed  of  murder. 

"  America  has  turned  traitor  to  all  that, 
you  see  ;  that's  the  way  we  look  at  it.  Now 
we're  a  military  nation,  an  organised  pirate 
like  France  and  England  and  Germany." 

"  But  American  idealism  ?  The  speeches, 
the  notes  ?  "  cried  Lully,  catching  the  edge  of 
the  table  with  his  two  brown  hands. 

"  Camouflage,"  said  Martin. 

"  You  mean  it's  insincere  ?  " 

"  The  best  camouflage  is  always  sincere." 

Dubois  ran  his  hands  through  his  hair. 

"  Of  course,  why  should  there  be  any 
difference  ?  "  he  said. 

"  Oh,  we're  all  dupes,  we're  all  dupes. 
Look,  Lully,  old  man,  fill  up  the  Americans' 
glasses." 

"  Thanks." 

"  And  I  used  to  believe  in  liberty,"  said 
Martin.  He  raised  his  tumbler  and  looked  at 
the  candle  through  the  pale  yellow  champagne. 
On  the  wall  behind  him,  his  arm  and  hand  and 
the  tumbler  were  shadowed  huge  in  dusky 

H 


ii4    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

lavender  blue.  He  noticed  that  his  was  the 
only  tumbler. 

"  I  am  honoured,"  he  said  ;  "  mine  is  the 
only  glass." 

"  And  that's  looted,"  said  Merrier. 

"  It's  funny  ..."  Martin  suddenly  felt 
himself  filled  with  a  desire  to  talk.  "  All  my 
life  I've  struggled  for  my  own  liberty  in  my 
small  way.  Now  I  hardly  know  if  the  thing 
exists." 

"  Exists  ?  Of  course  it  does,  or  people 
wouldn't  hate  it  so,"  cried  Lully. 

"  I  used  to  think,"  went  on  Martin,  "  that 
it  was  my  family  I  must  escape  from  to  be 
free ;  I  mean  all  the  conventional  ties,  the 
worship  of  success  and  the  respectabilities 
that  is  drummed  into  you  when  you're 
young." 

"  I  suppose  everyone  has  thought  that. ..." 

"  How  stupid  we  were  before  the  war,  how 
we  prated  of  small  revolts,  how  we  sniggered 
over  little  jokes  at  religion  and  government. 
And  all  the  while,  in  the  infinite  greed,  in  the 
infinite  stupidity  of  men,  this  was  being 
prepared."  Andre  Dubois  was  speaking, 
puffing  nervously  at  a  cigarette  between 
phrases,  now  and  then  pulling  at  his  beard 
with  a  long,  sinewy  hand. 

"  What  terrifies  me  rather  is  their  power 
to  enslave  our  minds,"  Martin  went  on,  his 
voice  growing  louder  and  surer  as  his  idea 
carried  him  along.  "  I  shall  never  forget  the 
flags,  the  menacing,  exultant  flags  along  all  the 
streets  before  we  went  to  war,  the  gradual 
unbaring  of  teeth,  gradual  lulling  to  sleep  of 
people's  humanity  and  sense  by  the  phrases, 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    115 

the  phrases.  .  .  .  America,  as  you  know,  is 
ruled  by  the  press.  And  the  press  is  ruled  by 
whom  ?  Who  shall  ever  know  what  dark 
forces  bought  and  bought  until  we  should  be 
ready  to  go  blinded  and  gagged  to  war  ?  .  .  . 
People  seem  to  so  love  to  be  fooled.  Intellect 
used  to  mean  freedom,  a  light  struggling 
against  darkness.  Now  the  darkness  is  using 
the  light  for  its  own  purposes.  .  .  .  We  are 
slaves  of  bought  intellect,  willing  slaves." 

"  But,  Howe,  the  minute  you  see  that  and 
laugh  at  it,  you're  not  a  slave.  Laugh  and  be 
individually  as  decent  as  you  can,  and  don't 
worry  your  head  about  the  rest  of  the  world ; 
and  have  a  good  time  in  spite  of  the  God 
damned  scoundrels,"  broke  out  Randolph  in 
English.  "  No  use  worrying  yourself  into  the 
grave  over  a  thing  you  can't  help." 

"  There  is  one  solution  and  one  only,  my 
friends,"  said  the  blonde  Norman ;  "  the 
Church.  ..."  He  sat  up  straight  in  his 
chair,  speaking  slowly  with  expressionless 
face.  "  People  are  too  weak  and  too  kindly 
to  shift  for  themselves.  Government  of  some 
sort  there  must  be.  Lay  Government  has 
proved  through  all  the  tragic  years  of  history 
to  be  merely  a  ruse  of  the  strong  to  oppress 
the  weak,  of  the  wicked  to  fool  the  confiding. 
There  remains  only  religion.  In  the  organisa 
tion  of  religion  lies  the  natural  and  suitable 
arrangement  for  the  happiness  of  man.  The 
Church  will  govern  not  through  physical  force 
but  through  spiritual  force." 

"  The  force  of  fear."  Lully  jumped  to  his 
feet  impatiently,  making  the  bottles  sway  oa 
the  table. 


n6    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

'  The  force  of  love.  ...  I  once  thought  as 
you  do,  my  friend,"  said  the  Norman,  pulling 
Lully  back  into  his  chair  with  a  smile. 

Lully  drank  a  glass  of  champagne  greedily 
and  undid  the  buttons  of  his  blue  jacket. 

"  Go  on,"  he  said  ;  "  it's  madness." 

"  All  the  evil  of  the  Church,"  went  on  the 
Norman's  even  voice,  "  comes  from  her 
struggles  to  attain  supremacy.  Once  assured 
of  triumph,  established  as  the  rule  of  the 
world,  it  becomes  the  natural  channel  through 
which  the  wise  rule  and  direct  the  stupid,  not 
for  their  own  interest,  not  for  ambition  for 
worldly  things,  but  for  the  love  that  is  in 
them.  The  freedom  the  Church  offers  is  the 
only  true  freedom.  It  denies  the  world,  and 
the  slaveries  and  rewards  of  it.  It  gives  the 
love  of  God  as  the  only  aim  of  life." 

"  But  think  of  the  Church  to-day,  the 
cardinals  at  Rome,  the  Church  turned  every 
where  to  the  worship  of  tribal  gods.  ..." 

'  Yes,  but  admit  that  that  can  be  changed. 
The  Church  has  been  supreme  in  the  past ; 
can  it  not  again  be  supreme  ?  All  the  evil 
comes  from  the  struggle,  from  the  com 
promise.  Picture  to  yourself  for  a  moment  a 
world  conquered  by  the  Church,  ruled  through 
the  soul  and  mind,  where  force  will  not  exist, 
where  instead  of  all  the  multitudinous 
tyrannies  man  has  choked  his  life  with  in 
organising  against  other  men,  will  exist  the 
one  supreme  thing,  the  Church  of  God. 
Instead  of  many  hatreds,  one  love.  Instead  of 
many  slaveries,  one  freedom." 

"  A  single  tyranny,  instead  of  a  million. 
What's  the  choice  ?  "  cried  Lully. 


ONE   MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     117 

"  But  you  are  both  violent,  my  children." 
Merrier  got  to  his  feet  and  smilingly  filled  the 
glasses  all  round.  "  You  go  at  the  matter 
too  much  from  the  heroic  point  of  view.  All 
this  sermonising  does  no  good.  We  are  very 
simple  people  who  want  to  live  quietly  and 
have  plenty  to  eat  and  have  no  one  worry  us 
or  hurt  us  in  the  little  span  of  sunlight  before 
we  die.  All  we  have  now  is  the  same  war 
between  the  classes :  those  that  exploit  and 
those  that  are  exploited.  The  cunning,  un 
scrupulous  people  control  the  humane,  kindly 
people.  This  war  that  has  smashed  our  little 
European  world  in  which  order  was  so 
painfully  taking  the  place  of  chaos,  seems  to 
me  merely  a  gigantic  battle  fought  over  the 
plunder  of  the  world  by  the  pirates  who  have 
grown  fat  to  the  point  of  madness  on  the  work 
of  their  own  people,  on  the  work  of  the 
millions  in  Africa,  in  India,  in  America,  who 
have  come  directly  or  indirectly  under  the 
yoke  of  the  insane  greed  of  the  white  races. 
Well,  our  edifice  is  ruined.  Let's  think  no 
more  of  it.  Ours  is  now  the  duty  of  re 
building,  reorganising.  I  have  not  faith 
enough  in  human  nature  to  be  an  anarchist. 
.  .  .  We  are  too  like  sheep ;  we  must  go  in 
flocks,  and  a  flock  to  live  must  organise. 
There  is  plenty  for  everyone,  even  with  the 
huge  growth  in  population  all  over  the  world. 
What  we  want  is  organisation  from  the  . 
bottom,  organisation  by  the  ungreedy,  by  the 
humane,  by  the  uncunning,  socialism  of  the 
masses  that  shall  spring  from  the  natural  need 
of  men  to  help  one  another;  not  socialism  from 
the  top  to  the  ends  of  the  governors,  that  they 


n8    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

may  clamp  us  tighter  in  their  fetters.  We 
must  stop  the  economic  war,  the  war  for 
existence  of  man  against  man.  That  will  be 
the  first  step  in  the  long  climb  to  civilisation. 
They  must  co-operate,  they  must  learn  that 
it  is  saner  and  more  advantageous  to  help  one 
another  than  to  hinder  one  another  in  the 
great  war  against  nature.  And  the  tyranny 
of  the  feudal  money  lords,  the  unspeakable 
misery  of  this  war  is  driving  men  closer 
together  into  fraternity,  co-operation.  It  is 
the  lower  classes,  therefore,  that  the  new 
world  must  be  founded  on.  The  rich  must  be 
extinguished  ;  with  them  wars  will  die.  First 
between  rich  and  poor,  between  the  exploiter 
and  the  exploited.  .  .  ." 

'  They  have  one  thing  in  common,"  in 
terrupted  the  blonde  Norman,  smiling. 
'  What's  that  ?  " 

"  Humanity.  .  .  .  That  is,  feebleness, 
cowardice/' 

"No,  indeed.  All  through  the  world's 
history  there  has  been  one  law  for  the  lord 
and  another  for  the  slave,  one  humanity  for 
the  lord  and  another  humanity  for  the  slave. 
What  we  must  strive  for  is  a  true  universal 
humanity." 

"  True,"  cried  Lully,  "  but  why  take  the 
longest,  the  most  difficult  road  ?  You  say 
that  people  are  sheep  ;  they  must  be  driven. 
I  say  that  you  and  I  and  our  American  friends 
here  are  not  sheep.  We  are  capable  of 
standing  alone,  of  judging  all  for  ourselves, 
and  we  are  just  ordinary  people  like  anyone 
else." 

"Oh,  but  look  at  us,  Lully  ! "  interrupted 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917    119 

Merrier.  "  We  are  too  weak  and  too 
cowardly  ..." 

"  An  example,"  said  Martin,  excitedly 
leaning  across  the  table.  "  We  none  of  us 
believe  that  war  is  right  or  useful  or  anything 
but  a  hideous  method  of  mutual  suicide. 
Have  we  the  courage  of  our  own  faith  ?  " 

"  As  I  said,"  Merrier  took  up  again,  "  I 
have  too  little  faith  to  be  an  anarchist,  but  I 
have  too  much  to  believe  in  religion."  His 
tin  cup  rapped  sharply  on  the  table  as  he  set 
it  down. 

"  No,"  Lully  continued,  after  a  pause,  "  it 
is  better  for  man  to  worship  God,  his  image 
on  the  clouds,  the  creation  of  his  fancy,  than 
to  worship  the  vulgar  apparatus  of  organised 
life,  government.  Better  sacrifice  his  children 
to  Moloch  than  to  that  society  for  the  propa 
gation  and  protection  of  commerce,  the  nation. 
Oh,  think  of  the  cost  of  government  in  all 
the  ages  since  men  stopped  living  in  maraud 
ing  tribes  !  Think  of  the  great  men  martyred. 
Think  of  the  thought  trodden  into  the  dust. 
.  .  .  Give  man  a  chance  for  once.  Govern 
ment  should  be  purely  utilitarian,  like  the 
electric  light  wires  in  a  house.  It  is  a  method 
for  attaining  peace  and  comfort — a  bad  one, 
I  think,  at  that  ;  not  a  thing  to  be  worshipped 
as  God.  The  one  reason  for  it  is  the  protec 
tion  of  property.  Why  should  we  have 
property  ?  That  is  the  central  evil  of  the 
world.  .  .  .  That  is  the  cancer  that  has  made 
life  a  hell  of  misery  until  now  ;  the  inflated 
greed  of  it  has  spurred  on  our  nations  of  the 
West  to  throw  themselves  back,  for  ever, 
perhaps,  into  the  depths  of  savagery.  .  .  . 


120    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

Oh,  if  people  would  only  trust  their  own 
fundamental  kindliness,  the  fraternity,  the 
love  that  is  the  strongest  thing  in  life.  Abolish 
property,  and  the  disease  of  the  desire  for  it, 
the  desire  to  grasp  and  have,  and  you'll  need 
no  government  to  protect  you .  The  vividness 
and  resiliency  of  the  life  of  man  is  being  fast 
crushed  under  organisation,  tabulation.  Over- 
organisation  is  death.  It  is  disorganisation, 
not  organisation,  that  is  the  aim  of  life." 

"  I  grant  that  what  all  of  you  say  is  true, 
but  why  say  it  over  and  over  again  ?  "  Andre 
Dubois  talked,  striding  back  and  forth  beside 
the  table,  his  arms  gesticulating.  His  com 
pound  shadow  thrown  by  the  candles  on  the 
white  wall  followed  him  back  and  forth, 
mocking  him  with  huge  blurred  gestures. 
'  The  Greek  philosophers  said  it  and  the 
Indian  sages.  Our  descendants  thousands  of 
years  from  now  will  say  it  and  wring  their 
hands  as  we  do.  Has  not  someone  on  earth 
the  courage  to  act  ?  .  .  ."  The  men  at  the 
table  turned  towards  him,  watching  his  tall 
figure  move  back  and  forth. 

'  We  are  slaves.  We  are  blind.  We  are 
deaf.  Why  should  we  argue,  we  who  have 
no  experience  of  different  things  to  go  on  ? 
It  has  always  been  the  same  :  man  the  slave 
of  property  or  religion,  of  his  own  shadow. 
.  .  .  First  we  must  burst  our  bonds,  open  our 
eyes,  clear  our  ears.  Now  we  know  nothing 
but  what  we  are  told  by  the  rulers.  Oh,  the 
lies,  the  lies,  the  lies,  the  lies  that  life  is 
smothered  in  !  We  must  strike  once  more 
for  freedom,  for  the  sake  of  the  dignity  of  man. 
Hopelessly,  cynically,  ruthlessly  we  must  rise 


• 


ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917     I2i 

and  show  at  least  that  we  are  not  taken  in  ; 
that  we  are  slaves  but  not  willing  slaves.  Oh[ 
they  have  deceived  us  so  many  times.  We 
have  been  such  dupes,  we  have  been  such 
dupes  !  " 

'  You  are  right,"  said  the  blonde  Norman 
sullenly  ;   "  we  have  all  been  dupes." 

A  sudden  self-consciousness  chilled  them 
all  to  silence  for  a  while.  Without  wanting 
to,  they  strained  their  ears  to  hear  the  guns. 
There  they  were,  throbbing  loud,  unceasing, 
towards  the  north,  like  hasty  muffled  drum- 
beating. 

Cease  ;  drain  not  to  its  dregs  the  wine, 
Of  bitter  Prophecy. 
The  world  is  weary  of  its  past. 
Oh,  might  it  die  or  rest  at  last. 

All  through  the  talk  snatches  from  Hellas 
had  been  running  through  Howe's  head. 

After  a  long  pause  he  turned  to  Merrier  and 
asked  him  how  he  had  fared  in  the  attack. 

"  Oh,  not  so  badly.  I  brought  my  skin 
back,"  said  Merrier,  laughing.  "  It  was  a  dull 
business.  After  waiting  eight  hours  under 
gas  bombardment  we  got  orders  to  advance, 
and  so  over  we  went  with  the  barrage  way 
ahead  of  us.  There  was  no  resistance  where 
we  were.  We  took  a  lot  of  prisoners  and  blew 
up  some  dugouts  and  I  had  the  good  luck  to 
find  a  lot  of  German  chocolate.  It  came  in 
handy,  I  can  tell  you,  as  no  ravitaillement 
came  for  two  days.  We  just  had  biscuits  and 
I  toasted  the  biscuits  and  chocolate  together 
and  had  quite  good  meals,  though  I  nearly 


122    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

died  of  thirst  afterwards.  .  .  .  We  lost 
heavily,  though,  when  they  started  counter 
attacking." 

"  An'  no  one  of  you  were  touched  ?  " 

"  Luck.  .  .  .  But  we  lost  many  dear 
friends.  Oh,  it's  always  like  that." 

"  Look  what  I  brought  back — a  German 
gun,"  said  Andr6  Dubois,  going  to  the 
corner  of  the  room. 

"  That's  some  souvenir,"  said  Tom  Ran 
dolph,  sitting  up  suddenly,  shaking  himself 
out  of  the  reverie  he  had  been  sunk  in  all 
through  the  talk  of  the  evening. 

"  And  I  have  three  hundred  rounds.  They'll 
come  in  handy  some  day." 

'  When  ?  " 

'  In  the  revolution — after  the  war." 

"  That's  the  stuff  I  like  to  hear,"  cried 
Randolph,  getting  to  his  feet.  "  Why  wait 
for  the  war  to  end  ?  " 

"  Why  ?  Because  we  have  not  the  courage. 
.  .  .  But  it  is  impossible  until  after  the  war." 

"  And  then  you  think  it  is  possible  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Will  it  accomplish  anything  ?  " 

"God  knows." 

"  One  last  bottle  of  champagne,"  cried 
Merrier. 

They  seated  themselves  round  the  table 
again.  Martin  took  in  at  a  glance  the  eager 
sunburned  faces,  the  eyes  burning  with  hope, 
with  determination,  and  a  sudden  joy  flared 
through  him. 

"  Oh,  there  is  hope,"  he  said,  drinking  down 
his  glass.  '  We  are  too  young,  too  needed  to 
fail.  We  must  find  a  way,  find  the  first  step 


ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917    123 

of  a  way  to  freedom,  or  life  is  a  hollow 
mockery." 

"  To  Revolution,  to  Anarchy,  to  the 
Socialist  state,"  they  all  cried,  drinking  down 
the  last  of  the  champagne.  All  the  candles 
but  one  had  guttered  out.  Their  shadows 
swayed  and  darted  in  long  arms  and  changing, 
grotesque  limbs  about  the  room. 

"  But  first  there  must  be  peace,"  said  the 
Norman,  Jean  Chenier,  twisting  his  mouth 
into  a  faintly  bitter  smile. 

"  Oh,  indeed,  there  must  be  peace." 

"  Of  all  slaveries,  the  slavery  of  war,  of 
armies,  is  the  bitterest,  the  most  hopeless 
slavery."  Lully  was  speaking,  his  smooth 
brown  face  in  a  grimace  of  excitement  and 
loathing.  "  War  is  our  first  enemy." 

"  But  oh,  my  friend,"  said  Merrier,  "  we 
will  win  in  the  end.  All  the  people  in  all  the 
armies  of  the  world  believe  as  we  do.  In  all 
the  minds  the  seed  is  sprouting." 

"  Before  long  the  day  will  come.  The 
tocsin  will  ring." 

"  Do  you  really  believe  that  ? "  cried 
Martin.  "  Have  we  the  courage,  have  we  the 
energy,  have  we  the  power  ?  Are  we  the 
men  our  ancestors  were  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Dubois,  crashing  down  on  the 
table  with  his  fist ;  "  we  are  merely  in 
tellectuals.  We  cling  to  a  mummified  world. 
But  they  have  the  power  and  the  nerve." 

"  Who  ?  " 

"  The  stupid  average  working-people." 

"  We  only  can  combat  the  lies,"  said  Lully  ; 
"  they  are  so  easily  duped.  After  the  war 
that  is  what  we  must  do." 


124    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  Oh,  but  we  are  all  such  dupes,"  cried 
Dubois.  "  First  we  must  fight  the  lies.  It 
is  the  lies  that  choke  us." 

It  was  very  late.  Howe  and  Tom  Randolph 
were  walking  home  under  a  cold  white  moon 
already  well  sunk  in  the  west ;  northward 
was  a  little  flickering  glare  above  the  tops  of 
the  low  hills  and  a  sound  of  firing  as  of 
muffled  drums  beaten  hastily. 

"  With  people  like  that  we  needn't  despair 
of  civilisation,"  said  Howe. 

"  With  people  who  are  young  and  aren't 
scared  you  can  do  lots." 

"  We  must  come  over  and  see  those  fellows 
again.  It's  such  a  relief  to  be  able  to  talk." 

"  And  they  give  you  the  idea  that  some 
thing's  really  going  on  in  the  world,  don't 
they  ?  " 

"  Oh,  it's  wonderful !  Think  that  the 
awakening  may  come  soon." 

'  We  might  wake  up  to-morrow  and  ..." 

"  It's  too  important  to  joke  about ;  don't 
be  an  ass,  Tom." 

They  rolled  up  in  their  blankets  in  the 
silent  barn  and  listened  to  the  drum-fire  in 
the  distance.  Martin  saw  again,  as  he  lay  on 
his  side  with  his  eyes  closed,  the  group  of  men 
in  blue  uniforms,  men  with  eager  brown  faces 
and  eyes  gleaming  with  hope,  and  saw  their 
full  red  lips  moving  as  they  talked. 

The  candle  threw  the  shadows  of  their 
heads,  huge,  fantastic,  and  of  their  gesticulat 
ing  arms  on  the  white  walls  of  the  kitchen. 
And  it  seemed  to  Martin  Howe  that  all  his 
friends  were  gathered  in  that  room. 


CHAPTER  X 

"  r  I  "AHEY  say  you  sell  shoe-laces,"  said 
I  Martin,  his  eyes  blinking  in  the 
A  faint  candlelight. 

Crouched  in  the  end  of  the  dugout  was  a 
man  with  a  brown  skin  like  wrinkled  leather, 
and  white  eyebrows  and  moustaches.  All 
about  him  were  piles  of  old  boots,  rotten  with 
wear  and  mud,  holding  fantastically  the 
imprints  of  the  toes  and  ankle-bones  of  the 
feet  that  had  worn  them.  The  candle  cast 
flitting  shadows  over  them  so  that  they 
seemed  to  move  back  and  forth  faintly,  as  do 
the  feet  of  wounded  men  laid  out  on  the  floor 
of  the  dressing-station. 

"  I'm  a  cobbler  by  profession,"  said  the 
man.  He  made  a  gesture  with  the  blade  of 
his  knife  in  the  direction  of  a  huge  bundle  of 
leather  laces  that  hung  from  a  beam  above 
his  head.  "  I've  done  all  those  since  yester 
day.  I  cut  up  old  boots  into  laces." 

"  Helps  out  the  five  sous  a  bit,"  said 
Martin,  laughing. 

"  This  post  is  convenient  for  my  trade," 
went  on  the  cobbler,  as  he  picked  out  another 
boot  to  be  cut  into  laces,  and  started  hacking 
the  upper  part  off  the  worn  sole.  "  At  the 
little  hut,  where  they  pile  up  the  stiffs  before 
they  bury  them — you  know,  just  to  the  left 
outside  the  abri— they  leave  lots  of  their 


126    ONE  MAN'S  INITIATION— 1917 

boots  around.  I  can  pick  up  any  number  I 
want."  With  a  clasp-knife  he  was  cutting 
the  leather  in  a  spiral,  paring  off  a  thin  lace. 
He  contracted  his  bushy  eyebrows  as  he  bent 
over  his  work.  The  candlelight  glinted  on  the 
knife  blade  as  he  twisted  it  about  dexterously. 
'  Yes,  many  a  good  copain  of  mine  has  had 
his  poor  feet  in  those  boots.  What  of  it  ? 
Some  day  another  fellow  will  be  making  laces 
out  of  mine,  eh  ?  "  He  gave  a  wheezy, 
coughing  laugh. 

"  I  guess  I'll  take  a  pair.  How  much  are 
they  ?  " 

"  Six  sous." 

"  Good." 

The  coins  glinted  in  the  light  of  the  candle 
as  they  clinked  in  the  man's  leather-blackened 
palm. 

"  Good-bye,"  said  Martin.  He  walked  past 
men  sleeping  in  the  bunks  on  either  side  as  he 
went  towards  the  steps. 

At  the  end  of  the  dugout  the  man  crouched 
on  his  pile  of  old  leather,  with  his  knife  that 
glinted  in  the  candlelight  dexterously  carving 
laces  out  of  the  boots  of  those  who  no  longer 
needed  them. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THERE  is  no  sound  in  the  ppste  de 
secours.  A  faint  greenish  light  ni 
ters  down  from  the  quiet  woods 
outside.  Martin  is  kneeling  beside  a  stretcher 
where  lies  a  mass  of  torn  blue  uniform  crossed 
in  several  places  by  strips  of  white  bandages 
clotted  with  dark  blood.  The  massive  face, 
grimed  with  mud,  is  very  waxy  and  grey. 
The  light  hair  hangs  in  clots  about  the 
forehead.  The  nose  is  sharp,  but  there  is  a 
faint  smile  about  the  lips  made  thin  by 
pain. 

"  Is  there  anything  I  can  get  you  ?  "  asks 
Martin  softly. 

"  Nothing.'*  Slowly  the  blue  eyelids 
uncover  hazel  eyes  that  burn  feverishly. 

"  But  you  haven't  told  me  yet,  how's 
Merrier  ?  " 

"  A  shell  .  .  .  dead  .  .  .  poor  chap." 

"  And  the  anarchist,  Lully  ?  " 

"  Dead." 

"  And  Dubois  ?  " 

"  Why  ask  ? "  came  the  faint  rustling 
voice  peevishly.  "  Everybody's  dead. 
You're  dead,  aren't  you  ?  " 

"  No,  I'm  alive,  and  you.  A  little  courage. 
.  We  must  be  cheerful." 


128    ONE  MAN'S   INITIATION— 1917 

"  It's  not  for  long.  To-morrow,  the  next 
day.  ..."  The  blue  eyelids  slip  back  over 
the  crazy  burning  eyes  and  the  face  takes  on 
again  the  waxen  look  of  death. 


THE   END 


-    PRINTED  B¥  THE  ANCHOB  PEBHS,  LTD.,  TIPIBEE,  KSSEX,  ENtiLAKD 


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